Big Plans, Bigger Distractions

I had grandiose plans to get elbow deep in my latest project today.

It’s one of those stories that starts off as a hypothetical conversation with a friend and quickly morphs out of control like a wildfire in a cotton field.

If you asked me, I’d tell you I was a “pantser.”

To a non-writer, you might imagine me gallivanting around pulling down unsuspecting victim’s trousers then pointing and laughing at them, but in the writing world, a “pantser” is someone without a real plan or outline, who flies by the seat of ’em while writing. You let the muse take you. Without rules, plot points, or other restrictions to inhibit the organic progression of the storyline.

I would not claim to be a planner – or someone who outlines out the entire story, details every character, and knows every intimate detail about them. Despite my Type A personality in which I can, at times, desperately fight to control the outcome of things I’ve deluded myself into believing I could control, I find it appealing to get lost in writing and not know where it will take me.

In actuality, I am a “plantser.”

I have conversations in my head with people I’ve never met. I come up with entire backstories on why a secondary character might ditch her terrible double-blind-date to catch a late movie with the waiter she met at the restaurant. The details of their date will come naturally, but when I go down to write it, I’ve already laid the groundwork.

I have a plan in mind for the secondary character’s spin-off story and who she ends up with (….and I’ll never telllllll…well, I mean, hopefully, I will and you can buy the book), and I haven’t even dug in on the main story yet.

Writing is about making connections, fabricating details, and spinning addictive webs for your reader to follow…and it’s intoxicating.

So why is it so hard to find the time to do it?

Why is it that in the four free hours that I had set aside today to work on my book, I’ve started a loaf of bread (sourdough is another addiction), loaded the laundry in the wash and the dishes in the dishwasher, redesigned my author site for web and mobile, created a Facebook Author page, (written this blog post…) and am now fighting the urge to go and play in my greenhouse?

If I had a quarter for every time a writer Tweeted about their lack of writing, I could retire in Bora Bora right now.

Do all artists have this attention deficit disorder towards their passions? Do painters polish their silver candelabras (do people still have those?) instead of their craft? Do sculptors binge watch Netflix instead of molding their own perspective of the world?

Or is this a unique writer trait that we can create entire worlds in our minds, but can’t find the time to finish jotting them down.

Curiouser and curiouser…

Alright, I’m off to go right now…and I’ll let you decide if that was a Freudian slip or intentional typo 😉

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