Happy Day After Halloween! Did all of the ghosts and goblins and other fabulous and creative little and big ones have fun? You may be thinking the reason I'm having a problem with pants is because I ate too much Halloween candy last night (& possibly this morning.) Well it’s not true! Okay, it's a little true, but I have stretchy pants for this very occasion.
What I’m actually talking about has to do with writing. And since it's the first day of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) I thought today would be the perfect opportunity to talk about my writing pants. As many of my fellow wordsmiths know, when we sit down to create a story, most of us fall into one of two camps: we either start with an outline, or we just go for it. I’ve always been in the later category, otherwise known as a "pantser," aka a person who writes by the seat of their pants. My writing has always been very character driven. And these characters have loud voices that demand attention, so I generally let them guide the action. There's something exciting about starting a new story or even a new chapter, not knowing what my characters have in mind. It's as if I'm experiencing the story the same way my readers will experience it, and I have always loved that part of my writing process. I imagine most pansters feel the same. Of course, at some point, I do need to reel my characters in and figure out a direction. I call this my AH-HA moment. It's when everything magically falls into place, and I never know when it will strike. Although I can say from experience that it's often when I'm doing something that has nothing to do with writing and is most likely and inconveniently at a time when I'm away from any sort of writing or recording implement. So why are my pants such a problem?
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