How hard can it be to write a novel? You just start at the beginning and write until you reach the end, right? Y’all. If you were wondering, it’s much harder than it looks.

That was my first mistake, right out of the gate. I had characters, setting, and a premise. It escaped me that I needed an actual PLOT, which is why I made it three chapters in and came to a screeching halt. Stuck. No idea where to go next.

If you picture a novel as a journey, it helps to have a starting place AND a destination. In order to get from point A to point B, you need a route. Now, the beauty of it is that there are an endless number of routes to that end destination, and the story can take as many twists, turns, and detours as it needs to to get there.

This is where I learned about Pantsing vs. Plotting (or, Plotsing, if you prefer; I do).

Pantsers (a reference to flying by the seat of your pants) are the writers who do, in fact, just sit down and start writing with only the vaguest notion of where things are going. They make it up along the way. Plotsers insist that a highly structured outline before starting is the only way to go. Having spent the last *mumble* eleven *mumble* years trial-and-erroring my own first novel, I think I’m a bit of both. When I realized I needed a better plan, I did sketch out an outline. The problem was that I’d start writing according to my outline, but then my characters would decide to head south at Des Moines when I had them turning left at Albuquerque (they haz Opinions …). Every time this happened, I’d go back to the outline, starting from the current place, and re-sketch to the end. I’ve lost count now, but I’ve probably done this a million and twelve times.

But ya know, all that work was kinda worth it. Eventually, a real plot started to take shape with all those stitches sewn, pulled out, and sewn again in a slightly different pattern; routes charted, detours made, and charted again. I could go on with the metaphors, but you get the picture. 

😎