I have a system for my writing – I had to learn this in order to avoid having a million “future projects”. For example, it would be really easy to just open Twitter seven times a day, randomly think of something to Tweet, notice my coffee is empty and there’s some dust caught up in one of my computer keys, grab a 3X5 card and clean the dust out, then spend five minutes straightening the edge of the card!
See, you get nowhere like that!
I’ll make an admission – my first novel was pant’sed. I just kind of knew what I wanted the novel to be about. So I’d start writing. I got a hundred words in and gave up.
This was my work flow for YEARS.
When I found YWriter, I wanted to be a little more systematic. In learning how to use it, I found it was set up for using a synopsis of a few words for every scene.
So I tried it.
Thirty days later, my novel was done. I was astounded.
So I wrote for another fifteen days, ending up with a book that was 180,000 words. I’ve since edited out 29,000 words of that!
I adopted a system for writing, and found I was able to complete novels rapidly. Good novels.
Then I got the book “Save The Cat” to learn Screenwriting – another creative outlet for me.
It completely changed my system for the better. I got literally a shelf’s worth of books on writing. Each one added something to my writing system.
And one day a reply to a tweet really stopped me in my tracks. I’d paraphrased Stephen King, and tweeted that 90 days is sufficient to write any novel.
Someone responded with a challenge – where did I get that from? They’d never heard it before, and the overall tone seemed to question what I’d written. My response that my source was Stephen King stopped the questions.
This exchange led me to understand something about writers – all of them think you’re supposed to pants your way through a novel.
And it also taught me that very few writers truly have the kind of brain that REQUIRES pant’sing.
There’s left brains. There’s right brains. Easy way to determine what you are. Left handed? Right brain. Right handed? Left brain.
Some writers absolutely cannot function in a structured manner. They just naturally write, and without realizing it, they’re perfectly writing according to all the writing rules – three acts, inciting incident 10% of the way through the novel, rising and falling action, etc.
Are you one of those? Let’s find out. This month, write one novel with no planning whatsoever. You have 30 days. Minimum word count 1667 words per day. Do not structure it or plan your work.
Go.
Did it work? Were you able to hit the word count and exceed it?
If you could not, then you’re not a pantser. You may THINK you are – after all, that’s the image we’re given of writers from movies and TV shows. Yet if you look at pictures of writer’s spaces, you’ll notice many have corkboards. Or sticky notes. Or notebooks lying around.
They’ve got systems. Coppola wrote the movie “Patton” with a custom made corkboard/chalk board. He went through three historical books on Patton and wrote down page numbers that had an element he wanted to include in the script.
Writing is a surprisingly structured process – your writing must follow an organized process, or it becomes a disorganized mess very quickly.
Nicholas Reicher
Yes – I quoted myself, because I couldn’t find anyone else who’d said that!
Here’s the truth. Most writers are not Pant’sers. I’ve really only met one pant’ser, and she had a massive novel output – quite a few already self published (as many as three a year).
Most writers require structure. You can structure a novel very quickly. I made the decision on Oct. 29th to do NaNoWriMo, and I had really only two days to plan the novel.
I completed it in 24 days. That included a panicky plot revision when the book drifted in another direction, a complete computer crash, reformat and restore four days in. During those dayss I was forced to write out scenes by hand in a notebook, then transfer them to Scrivener once my computer was back up and running. Without those catastrophe’s, I could have been done in 18 days.
Not only do you have to have a structure for writing, you have to have one for the book process itself. Writing, editing, revising, rewriting, editing again, and editing in various formats.
You’ve got to structure even the music you use to write by. Create playlists of music to write to.
Conclusion
If you cannot complete a novel in 90 days, it’s time to conclude that pantsing does not work for you. Research book writing systems – does it work for you? If not, is there another that does, or can you modify this process?
If you cannot finish a novel, your brain may be telling you that your process is not working for you.
Find one that does.
