The Perils of Pantsterdom

 

I have a friend who is meticulous when it comes to mapping out his life. Each day, he creates a detailed list of things he hopes to accomplish and checks those items off as he completes them. Once, when I asked if he could pick me up at a mechanic’s shop where I planned to take my car for service the next morning, he wanted to know the exact time I would be there so he could tailor his commute around me. He relishes his anal-retentive tendencies and, I have no doubt, achieves much more in life as a result.

 

Then there’s me.

 

Other than the occasional shopping list, I don’t create a written agenda for any given day’s activities. And while I am halfway decent at planning fun things to do in advance of a vacation, once I arrive at my destination, I often go with the flow day-by-day. Just to see what happens.

 

For better or worse, this approach also applies to the way I write. Far from being a planner or plotter—the kind of writer who outlines everything before they start banging away at the keyboard—my M.O. as a self-confessed pantster is to develop bare-bones ideas in my head, start writing, and see where the story and my characters take me.

 

I confess, my inability—or lack of ambition—to develop a preconceived structure for my stories can be frustrating. Case in point: my current WIP, Place of Refuge. When I began writing, I had a kinda sorta idea how the story would flow. But as is often the case, I got about 50,000 words in and hit a wall. Like this guy.

 

Over the past few months, I’ve reread and reread and reread the manuscript x 100. I’ve made minor tweaks here and there and added new stuff, too, but not enough to qualify as genuine progress. Thus, I have reassessed my goal of self-publishing the book by the end of 2026. And, because I know my (lack of a) writing regimen better than anyone, I’ve set November 19 as the deadline to submit my final draft to my editor. In theory, this should provide me with ample time to finish the job. But it also means I won’t be sending the final product into the world until sometime in early 2027.

 

I mean, I could sit here and blame chronic overthinking or my distracted life or construct a plethora of other feeble excuses. Bottom line, though, when it comes to completing my books, I have met the enemy, and I am him. Even if by choice.

 

I’ve often wished I had the discipline to outline a novel from the opening sentence to the denouement. But then there are those occasions when I think, Well, if I’d planned this a certain way, then the outcome would have been radically different—and maybe not as satisfying.

 

This happened as I wrote The Waimea Two-Step. Near the end of the story, I wasn’t sure how to resolve a critical plot point. Then a character blurted out a confession of sorts and solved the problem for me. Something similar happened in The Hilo Hustle, except it involved the fate of a character, a matter I had not foreseen when I began writing.

 

Would either of these epiphanies have struck if I’d adhered to a strict outline? I doubt it. I suppose in retrospect there are advantages to making things up as you go along. It works for me, even though I secretly wish I was maybe half as anal as my friend.

 

But then, why let a plan get in the way of a good story?