I’ve always considered myself a plotter. I’m very fond of pantsing my way through revisions, rewriting a scene five times in quick succession if need be rather than taking the time to outline the most feasible approach.
It’s all just labels anyway. I’ve previously written about how, in their strictest sense, there’s almost no difference between them anyway.
As long as you end up with usable words on the page, it doesn’t really matter the method you employed to get them there.
Even though I had a thorough outline, I pantsed my way through a significant portion of my WIP’s first draft.
Now that I am some five drafts deep into revision, I find myself pinch-hitting for Team Pantser once again.
Painting by Tithi Luadthong
I’ve been answering these as part of my 10th writing birthday celebration back on February 12.
Are you a plotter…
(outliner)
(architect)
…or a pantser
(discovery writer)
(gardener)?
**No movie spoilers**
Quite unwittingly, this discussion arose on the heels of an entirely different examination of pantsing versus plotting.
(For the record on that account, I like to know where my story is going before I start and to rough out as much of the journey as I’m aware of up front, but I’m in no way wedded to it, nor do I subscribe to the notion that plotting will rob a story of the joy and magic of actually writing it. But you can read more about all that yourself.)
(Were I talking the end of my life, my thoughts would be considerably different, and if nothing else, I’d perhaps be referring back to this post about my bucket list.)
Ending a novel is hard. The fact that I’ve done it twice thus far in my writing career hasn’t made it any easier. Perhaps this is because only once did I consciously do so since my “two-book” series-in-progress grew to three books initially without my realizing it.
These are the people who research their destinations exhaustively to discover the hottest sites to visit. The people who book things months in advance to ensure they don’t miss out on those activities that always fill up and sell out.
These are the people who know ahead of time exactly the type of vacation experience they want, and make a near part-time job of scouring tour guides and soliciting knowledgeable friends and colleagues to transform the trip of their dreams into reality.
I’m not one of those people. Not even close.
To date, despite have been writing seriously for some six years, I’ve yet to complete anything novel-length that stands as a fully completed story – a fact that haunts me continuously.
I’d originally resolved to finish my WIP last year by my birthday, which is at the end of November.
I didn’t make that deadline, but consoled myself with the fact that I had an entire other novel to write to finish the story, my previously anticipated duology in fact being a trilogy.
But there’s still something about deadlines – something definitive and binding, which I suppose is the whole point. I almost never set deadlines. I really don’t like them, even though my “type” is supposed to thrive on them.
The Dark Angel Design Company, photography by Lunaesque
I never used to do this at all, as the thought of giving the dreaded “elevator pitch” makes my stomach churn like too much greasy pizza too close to bedtime.
But like anything bearing the label “dreaded”, said dread is usually lessened over time through devoting regular thought and effort to improving at the task at hand.
In other words, I need to practice pitching and promoting myself more.
Which is why, when tagged by my blog-buddy Eric J. Baker, to answer four questions about my WIP as part of the Writing Process Blog Tour, and I agreed to participate.
The four questions are thus as follows:
A Frame Around Infinity 