I get emails from people asking why I don’t write more blog entries about writing.  The answer is that I’m not sure how much non-writers care about writing.  But, this stuff does cross my mind from time to time.  Also, I need the opportunity to piss people off every once in a while.  Keep my hand in, as it were.

At an early writers’ meeting, when I was about a quarter of the way through my first manuscript, someone asked the guest speaker the following question:

“Are you a plotter or a panster?”

I had no idea what they were talking about.  I mean, it’s fairly easy to guess what “plotter” means.  But “panster?”   I mean, my word processing program keeps trying to change it to “punster,” so apparently I’m not the only one unfamiliar with the term.  Bill Gates doesn’t know it, either.

For the uniformed, a “plotter” is a novelist who has the entire plot of his novel outlined before he starts writing it.  A “panster” is someone who writes “by the seat of the pants”—he or she has a no more than a character or two and a basic story idea, and lets the story unfold during the writing process.

I’m a plotter.  With my business writing background, it never occurred to me to sit down and start writing a book if I didn’t have a complete outline.  Also, now that I usually write books for which I am already under contract, I’m obligated to turn in a “proposal,” which is a detailed synopsis and the first couple of chapters, in order to get paid.  And I do like to get paid!

I just finished Cry Mercy, the third book in the Mercy Hollings series, and it’s the closest I’ve ever come to a seat-of-the-pants book.  This happened because my initial proposal, which was based on an extremely detailed outline, was rejected by my publisher, who wanted me to save the proposed plot for a later installment (it will end up mostly in Book 5).    I was happy to make the change, mostly because it meant there would be later installments, but the rejection meant I had to turn in a new proposal in order to get paid.  And since I was running extremely low on cash, I threw together a new one pretty damned quickly.  It contained phrases like “after a series of events,” and “once the problem was resolved, then...”

Of course the editorial staff loved it, and told me to get started writing it.  Which I did.  Because I get paid again when the final manuscript is turned in.

I gotta tell you, writing without an outline was excruciating.  My plot was full of holes, and I had to figure out how to fill them as I went along.  Ultimately, I think it’s probably the strongest book I’ve ever written, but it took me three times as long as it should have.  And I had to do (gasp) rewrites when I would have a good idea and realize that, in order to make it work, I’d have to change something from four chapters ago.

Never, never, never, never again.

I’ve decided that you pansters that claim your process is merely different and not better or worse than that of plotters are in deep, deep denial.

In my corporate life, I used to do training on how to be organized.  I was perpetually told by disorganized people that they “didn’t have time to get organized.”  My favorite is the person with the horrendously cluttered office, in which one uses what I call “the archaeology method” to find anything – figure out how long it’s been since the last time you looked at it, then dig down to that layer.  This person invariably claims, “I know exactly where everything is in my office.”  But I never found that to be true. Not once.  These people were perpetually spending a half hour searching for something they needed in order to handle a five-minute problem, or dropping the ball on some assignment because something else got laid on top of the note telling them about it.

Seriously, I think you pansters all need to embrace the outline.    I know you’re afraid it’s going to stifle your creativity.  It’s not.  First, making the outline is PART of the creative process.  And second, filling gaping plot holes in advance will end up giving you more time in the long run.  I swear, it’s true!  And you can still rewrite and revise as much as you want. if that's what makes you (blech!) happy.  

Oh, hell, I know you’re going to do whatever you like but, as for me, I’m currently in the process of writing an outline for book 4 that will have my friends and families sending me information on support groups for obsessive anal retentives.