Pantser? Planner? Percolator?
One of my favorite NaNo terms is “pantser”—as in writing by the seat of your pants, without an outline.
The term brings up the age-old debate about how to best go about writing a novel: pantser vs. planner. I’m intrigued by people’s approaches to writing a novel because writers’ processes can seem as indelibly etched in their psyches as their genetic makeups. Some of us like clutter. Some of us need clean, organized spaces. Some of us live somewhere in between.
I tell myself I’m a planner but the truth is that I’m a pantser…it just always ends up that I toss out the outline halfway through the story. Now, if only I could toss the usual writing system and write without that stress of the outline I would totally do it.
But why change it if it is working?
