Tuesday 6 November 2012

Conclusion: Pantsing doesn't work for me!

Well, at the very least, pantsing* slows me down. The last few days, a number of factors have meant I've been working on scenes that either didn't exist in my plan, or needed to be modified significantly, and I have come to one stunning conclusion (okay not so stunning): pantsing it takes longer for me than planned scenes. Now, I'm not talking about those Zen moments when everything just flows and it's all brilliant, I love it when those happen. I'm talking about jobbing it, writing my needed wc for the day, i.e. working through the bits that need to be thought through and structuring the scene to drop in the needed hints and clues to the reader for what is going to happen later.

Well, anyway, conclusion aside, I managed 3K yesterday, NOT the 5K I was aiming for - see, pantsing is not my most productive mode, although it was quite fun. Today, I have a scene I've been thinking about for a while, although for some reason it's not in my plan, so not quite pantsing, but still, bad Sophie! And I have to rearrange some later scenes, because, guess what, pantsing the previous ones means that they need to be jiggled. Mixing planning and pantsing clearly is detrimental to the anal little me who likes to write notes longer than the actual scene :P.

*Definition pantsing - writing by the seat of one's underwear. Pantser - a person who habitually writes in this manner.

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