By the seat of my pants.

I like to plot things. I like to plan out my stories. For my Guardian Saga, after the first book was finished, I started to plot things out meticulously. There were even a few point in the first book where I had to know exactly what was happening and when.

Like, there's a chapter where I spent a good 2-3 hours researching orbital dynamics to figure out how long it would take my ship to orbit around a planet and get back to where it started, because I needed to know how long I had between things happening. I even played a little Kerbal Space Program to really cement what I was trying to do. Many Jebs were sacrificed for the greater good. All that for the sake of the final part of a book.

It's knowledge I'll probably never use in quite the same scale again, but who knows.

But anyway, back to plotting. Since that book, I liked to be somewhat heavy in plot. I had a brief paragraph outline what I wanted to happen in each chapter of the story. It allowed me to always know what comes next, what happened before, and how long it's been since I talked about character X or Y. I would also keep a running list of plot points to follow. That way I could always be sure I never had a glaring plot hole or forgotten thread.

Surprise, I still had those problems.

Problems aside, it did allow for more control over the process. Even with that level of plotting though, I always made sure to give myself room to breath, grow, and dance across the narrative. I had one moment in a story where I had set up a character to do a thing, and then realized, in no uncertain terms, that she would not do that thing. I then had to modify my narrative on the fly to accommodate her act of rebellion against me.

See, you can't plot too heavily, or you deny yourself room for inspiration.

Then there's my cousin. He writes too. He writes sans plotting. Or, as it's called 'by the seat of your pants'. You just write. You don't plot, you don't put anything down ahead of time, you just write, put one word in front of the other, until a story is born.

That terrified me.

Like the very idea of it was alien to me. I could not comprehend it.

But then I decided to try it. I started a story, and I'm writing it by the seat of my pants. I'm taking notes as things are revealed about the story so I can remember what happened, and even though I haven't committed it's direction to paper, I do still have some vague idea of what direction I think it will go, but I'm not tied to it.

To be honest, it still scares me a bit. I like what I've written, and I intend to throw it up here, warts and all, as soon as I can. I probably won't wait until it's done, because by its very nature I'm not sure when it will be done. So far, it's been a good story though. It's had emotional tones that have surprised me, decisions from my characters that have caught me off guard, and a world forming which is fascinating in its nature.

It's a nice project to jump into from time to time when I feel the need strike me.

Now, that said, experiment aside, I think I'm still a plotter, but there's room for both methods, and I would even go so far as to say room for both in the same project.

Writing and creativity is a fascinating thing to me because while there are methods and systems to improve your talents and hone your focus, I don't think there's any value in ascribing all your faith in a single system. You have to experiment, you have to learn.

Heck, this whole dang website is a big experiment to me. The process has to have experimentation to it, it has to have growth and struggle, or you'll grow bored and stagnate.

At least that's what I think. I could be wrong.

But I'm pretty sure I'm not in this case.