Calling All Writers

So, sometimes, I dabble in writing. By dabble, I mean that I am nowhere near anything decent in my work, but I have a wandering mind that likes to dream and craft stories in my head created with an incessant muse on my shoulder that wakes me up at 5 AM to think of said plotlines and characters. It's quite annoying, and I know that the only way to silence the muse is to do what it wants, and herein, I find a problem.

Backstory: I used to write constantly, though I was incredibly private about my writings and no one saw them unless they'd snuck into my hard drive and then discovered what I was typing so furiously. Only a few people know about my plans and what I would like to eventually be able to do (but likely never will). I'm still far-too private, as I frankly will need to accept that if these plans ever from to fruition that I will be forced to have people know that I wrote something.

However, before I consider these bigger and better plans for myself in this game, I have to get past certain flaws that are naturally occurring in my personality and brain (other than my incredible timidness that is only partially shed on this blog). Namely, since I am used to writing short stories that don't require much character development or planning, I am now finding that writing more involved stories are much, much more difficult for my ADD brain. This is why I'm asking all the writers out there- I know there are a few friends of mine that share this same creative drive as me- what their thoughts are. How do you slay this nasty beast? Is outlining and creating dossiers the way to go, or does that disrupt the muse? Should I create a step by step "show flow"? Shorts about my characters? Just run with it and hope it all melds? I would appreciate your thoughts, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one disturbed by my sleeping patterns.