According to plan…or not  
I’m a list maker, a task master and a goal setter. Nothing pleases me more than to tick off items on my list. I love mapping out my day, my month, my year, my life and checking off milestones as I meet them.
Anal? Yes. Absolutely.
In fact, I assert this mentality on others whenever I can. Who was the one who instigated the ‘Goal setting’ exercise within my critique group? Guilty. But don’t mock, the monthly exercise is still going strong two years later.
How many times have I set out to lose those last 10 lbs, itemizing each workout week after week? Moi. (But don’t ask me how well that’s gone…sigh)
So it should come as no surprise that in my writing work, I’m an outliner. Not your–and then this happens, and that happens, which causes this to happen–kind of outliner, but I definitely have a method to my, um, madness.
First I set up my Word document with all of my chapter headers in a neat document map. Ah, so pleasing to the eye. Then I put in a sentence for each chapter of what I figure is going to happen. Then I draft my first three chapters. Then I write my last chapter. Then I fill in the holes in between. What could be more logical, more sane, more civilized?
What I haven’t told you yet is the initial plan I start off with is usually NOTHING like the end result. You see, these mad gremlins leap out at me as I write and yell at me–”NO! Your main character would NOT do that, you idiot!!” or “Don’t be a sissy, make him squirm!!” or “You need to kill that character. Do it! Do it! You know you want to!!” and the wheels fall off of my best laid plans.
And you know what? Even though the gremlins are ugly and they make me squirm and I want them to go away because I had a perfectly good plot before they poked their snotty little heads into my story, sometimes they’re right. So I pat myself on the back and say “Good now, I listened to you and yes, you’re right, the story IS better, so get out of my manuscript, I’m the writer here. Bugger off, ugly, snot-nosed gremlins, I have a book to write.”
So I keep writing, but now I have a NEW outline, a BETTER plan and I think it can’t be any better than this and I’m writing along my merry way, feeling pretty smug. “I’m so clever,” I say to myself as I make my character squirm, just like the snotty-nosed gremlin said to and it works out great, and I continue along my NEW and BETTER outline. But even though I have planned and planned and planned…I hit a snag.
So I go have a shower, cause I do my best thinking in the shower. Maybe it’s all that steam opening up my pores and metaphorically it’s also opening up my MIND pores–yeah that’s it– and I’m thinking and thinking and wondering what ifs and I’m lathering, rinsing and repeating when all of a sudden there’s a tap on my shoulder and I look back to see this snotty looking, ugly gremlin and he flicks soap in my eye and I say “HEY!”
But the snotty looking, ugly gremlin ignores me and says, “You moron, I told you to make that character squirm and now look what you’ve done!” and I say, “But I did! And quit flicking soap in my eye.” and the snotty, ugly gremlin says, “Why not? That’s all you did to your character. A mere flick of soap in his eye. SO WHAT? You’re being too nice!! You’re making it too easy! RAISE THE STAKES! Don’t be a pansy!”
So I go back and see that yes, I have made it too easy. And darn that snotty, grubby no-good gremlin, but I take the plunge and RAISE THE STAKES and flick more and more soap in my character’s eye and my character now hates me but it makes him work harder and it makes him do things that I never knew was in him and makes other characters react to him in surprising ways and it makes the book better and the story more interesting and the ending all that more exciting…
And then I finish the first draft and have to start the process all over again.
Well, that’s the plan anyway…
So show of hands–are you a planner or a pantser?









I talked about waiting in my last post. That anxiety-ridden state of indecision, with all its dangly loose bits and paralysing angst. Is there anything worse than having a carrot dangled in front of you and not quite being able to reach it. Worse yet, having it snatched away?