Life in progress

Tag Archives: pantser


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#SoCS – Having to Guess

I’ve come to the conclusion that writing a series of books rather than a standalone is harder when you’re a pantser. A pantser, if you’re not familiar with the term, is a writer who writes by the seat of his or her pants, as opposed to a plotter, who plots the entire story out ahead of time. If I could just plot out where my characters are going to go after book three, I would know if their life beyond it was worth writing about. Because let’s face it, no one wants to read a book about people getting up and going to work every day, coming home, cooking dinner, watching TV and going to bed, ad nauseam. It’s bad enough that most of us do just that in real life.

Therefore, I can only guess whether my series will be a trilogy or if it will go on.

Don’t get me wrong – I love pantsing. Sometimes I’ll be happily typing along, minding my own business (because I don’t make up my stories. I just pluck them out of mid-air and transcribe them) and suddenly one of my characters will say something that completely blows me out of the water. Like, I had no idea it was coming. It’s by far the best part of writing. When you’re reading a book and you get hit by a sudden revelation, you can bet that there’s a good possibility the author was struck at the same point in the story with that same gong. What’s not to love about being hit by a gong? (I do enjoy stream of consciousness writing.)

If I was to guess right now, I’d say it’s going to be a trilogy. Yet I know I’m going to miss my characters so much that I’m not going to want to stop writing. Will they get up to more adventures? I guess they could. We all do, once in a while, right? If we didn’t, our boring day-in-day-out existences would drive us to eventually seek something more anyway.

Speaking of adventures, I’ve updated and edited an old post. It has more pictures now, as well as a few more links. I can only guess whether or not it will show up in your email if you follow me that way. I’m guessing it will, if you weren’t following me in July of 2013 when it was first posted. I urge you to read it if you haven’t already: it’s one of my best. Even if you have already read it, check out the new pictures. I’ll repost it in an hour or so. It’s entitled “A Haunted Visitation.”

John Holton 2016-2017

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. You can find the link to join in and read all the other posts here: https://lindaghill.com/2017/08/11/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-aug-1217/

While you’re here, take a good look at the badge, for it may be the last week in which it’s featured! The contest is on right now for a new SoCS badge design. We have five entries already, which means there are only five slots left open. Click the following link to read more about it, see the entries so far, and enter the contest yourself: https://lindaghill.com/2017/08/08/the-4th-annual-socs-badge-design-contest/


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SoCS – Not Knowing

I’m such an idiot. I mean, you’d think I’d think about what I might want to write before I come up with the prompts for SoCS, or at least when I do, but what really inspires me is the words themselves. I don’t think ahead past that until I actually sit down to write the post. This one, for instance.

Someone (sorry, I can’t remember who at the moment, but I’ll look it up when I’m finished writing this – J.L. Campbell (@JL_Campbell) – that’s who it was) said to me the other day on my A-Z reveal that they couldn’t write posts not knowing what they were going to write about ahead of time. I said I thrive on it. And I do. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this year’s A-Z, finding a word minutes before I sit down to write a post. I think I may end up writing many of the posts largely in Stream of Consciousness style, though I will probably edit them before I publish. For me, once I get on a roll with my writing I can’t stop. It’s like those conversations you have in your head when you finally figure out, sometimes hours later, what you should have said. That witticism that escaped you that makes you, later, slap yourself for not thinking of it sooner. Or the eloquent explanation of how you feel about something that sounds so good in your head, but once the confrontation is upon you, you trip over. THAT’s exactly how being on a roll feels like to me. It’s that speech that’s impossible to reproduce. And that’s the real beauty of not knowing.

This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.com/2015/03/27/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-2815/ Please join in today! Just click on the link to find out how!

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions