Becoming at Peace with my Pantsing Ways

I have come to peace with the fact that I am a panster when it comes to writing fiction. With non-fiction, I can do the whole organize and plan in advance thing. When putting together a story, I like to start writing with an idea in mind and go from there. It’s both refreshing and nerve wracking to write this way. A lot of times it feels like I’m trying to grasp a handful of air.

I tried to fight my seat of the pants tendencies, but I can’t. It’ll only continue to frustrate me and cause me angst if I try to put myself in the plotter-box.

Now, when I’ve come to the final stages of a story, I pull out the index cards and scene trackers to make sure that I’ve included all the elements: romance arc, scene and sequel elements, character development, spiritual threads, etc. But when I’m first writing a draft (or two, or three) I like to discover the story as I write it.

With this seat of the pants method, I have to do more rewrites so I give myself a lot of lead time before I’m ready to shop a story around.

How did I come to peace with my seat of the pants madness? I recently read a blog by Tess Gerritsen, one of my favorite thriller writers, where she writes that she’s a pantser. She writes four pages by hand each day in her first draft stage, and it takes her about five drafts before a story is done. But she only starts with a character in a predicament. And she’s written over twenty books that way. If she can do it, I can do it too 😉

For me it took a lot more than five drafts to get my first story where I wanted it, but I’ll chalk that up to my huge learning curve which I needed to overcome when I first started writing fiction in 2008. Hopefully, I won’t need to go through 30-plus drafts of a story in the future, or if I do go through 30-plus drafts (which is highly likely due to my Type-A tendencies), I’ll go through them quicker…I hope.

Right now, I’m in the middle of editing another story that I’ve written and I’ve starting my pantsing on a new story. So part of my day is spent editing one story and another part is spent writing new pages for another. Kind of schizophrenic because I’m shifting between two different story worlds, and so I have to put on two different hats.

However, once I reach the final stages for the story which I’m currently editing, it will demand my full energy which for me is similar to when a woman reaches the transition period of labor. I block out everything else and….push.

A crazy, but exhilarating way to live.

🙂