Advice for a First Time Author

I understand it as a writer being flexible. A quote that I've taken to heart is: "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." by Eisenhower. In my opinion, a writer has to know where his story is going to navigate all the left turns that will be thrown at him during the writing.
Godspeed!

 

1) I was just talking about Eisenhower yesterday and 2) that is a fantastic way to put it.

 

Here's another good one that I remember and for whatever reason has stuck with me:

"Think of dialogue as mini-conflicts. People rarely say exactly what they're thinking."

 

Interesting. I tend to use it, but not in the way of your examples. I use it when the character is from a past era. I wonder what your professor would think of this sort of usage.

For example (from a letter of one of my characters. He's telling a story himself - set around late 1700s or early 1800s):

"I rested at her [place] a few days, and on the first night, as we were warming our feet by the fire, I told her about our recent work. Yet it was when I mentioned your concerns about the awkward apathetic behavior of your daughter, that her eyes grew wide and her face grave."

or

"Yet it was on the day his youngest son was found dead that he became possessed with a [vengefulness?] that not even I or you have ever witnessed in any of the vilest people we have dealt with in our profession."


I also have an "it would":

"It would be my wish to be proposing to you a solution for what I’m about to describe, yet if there is even but a shred of hope, I am not aware of it..."

 

If you are a professional and have to hit word count on deadline within constraints of previous books/episodes then planning and outlining is mandatory.
If you are an amateur free of all constraints for genre, word count, deadlines, and previous or future books/episodes then just start writing and play Walter Mitty.

Much of this comes down to experience and skill. A good and experienced writer may only need 4 plot points in his head.
But for the rest of us sketching out a logical path from start to finish saves us time and wasted effort.

 

It doesn't matter what you write as long as your writing.

The rest would speak more to a lack of anything overly
useful. Most treat writing like pickup artists, in the sense
that just because it worked for them does not mean it
will work for you.

 

What if I do my best Walter Mittying when I'm planning and outlining

 

I am still researching this. Pantsing ala Walter Mitty is a form of brainstorming. Not efficient but better than nothing.
Outlines and gathering content to use are iterative. If your MBTI is not ISTJ then you are more likely to have to do it the WM way.

 

Does "Walter Mitty" mean something more specific than just letting one's imagination run wild? I was thinking that I'm a planner who starts by Walter Mittying scenarios before turning them into words (as opposed to Walter Mittying while I'm making the words).

Were you using the term differently?

 

Speaking in general, I see preparation as getting all my 'left brain' stuff done so my 'right brain' can have the stage to itself. Time is a resource that can't be bought, borrowed or horded. My creative mind, that crazy squirrel running in the wheel, works at its own pace so I really do try to give it as much room to play as I can. Also, as a developing writer, I see now as the time to develop those professional work habits that, Lord Willing, I will actually need one day.
Godspeed!

 

To me Walter Mitty means someone pretending at being an author by just writing. But all they do is fill up desk drawers with mss they never finish.

Just writing can be an inefficient way to brainstorm. But if that was intentional then I would not put the WM label on it. I would call it planning albeit inefficiently done.

It is when somebody just sits down to write and expects a novel to emerge somehow that I label it WM. Technically they might actually write a novel, although that is rare, but if your name is not Stephen King the odds are that it will be pure garbage.

 

@joe sixpak OK, we weren't talking about the same thing then

 

That happens a lot here when people have different meanings for words they use.

 

Especially with totally popular, well-trodden terms like "Walter Mittying."

 

I only recall it from many decades ago when we brieflyhad to read it for an English class.

 

It's from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, by James Thurber. It's about this really meek guy who imagines himself in several different heroic roles. There's way more to it than that, but I too, read it long ago in an English class, and so don't remember the specifics. It was also made into a movie starring Ben Stiller in 2013 , I think?

 

Exactly. That is how I remember it. All fantasy imagination role playing but not really doing anything just like most pantsers do.

 

I think there's some confusion of terms here.

"Pantsing" is not procrastinating. It's a method of writing. So, when someone says they're a "pantser," it means that is how they actively write. Procrastinating, or "Walter Mittying" is a totally different thing.

To say that "most pantsers don't really don anything" is not only wrong, but a little counter-intuitive. Plotting/organizing is not the only way to be productive. And for some people, myself included, it's actually less productive to plan and outline before I write. When I've tried to plot and outline in the past, It's spoiled my excitement for the story. That doesn't mean it's wrong for everyone, but it's certainly wrong for me.

tl;dr: Let's not make sweeping, incorrect statements, guy.

 

"It is a little wrong to call a tomato a vegetable.
It is very wrong to call a tomato a suspension bridge."- Stewart-Big Bang Theory-

 

REASONS

 

Really? (Most) Pantsers play at being writers like WM. Professionals plan organise plot and are methodical about their writing.

Pantsing is why there are millions of unfinished mss in desk drawers and why kindle is overrun with so much krap.

The race is not always to the swift.
The battle is not always to the strong.
But that is the way to bet according to my bookie.

Whether they admit it or not the pantsers who succeed really organised as they went, in an interactive manner, or did it in their heads.
But in the end they had to have organised or the work would be terrible bad. In the end they have an implicit outline if not an explicit one.

And they are fooling themselves when they claim they cant be creative while outlining or planning. Just writing ala pantsing is just an inefficient way to brainstorm some useful content to fit into the final book.

Pros on deadline and with constraints like word count and genre will always plan first and use brainstorming or other more productive ways to be creative.

 

Please tell me you're not serious.

 

Nobody said anything about procrastination. But pantsing is always slower than planning.
Pure pantsing is the epitome of playing WM. Using pantsing as a free writing exercise to generate ideas is part of planning but is slower an inefficient than brainstorming and then expanding later.