There’s a certain romanticism in writing things out by hand. It can conjure up images of sparks of brilliance only just contained by ink by a writer hunched over a cafe table sipping a cappuccino in Paris … et.cet et. cet. In reality, I find it to be frustrating and unwieldy — at least when I’m trying to write a full scene.
But what I will use traditional pen and paper for is PLOTTING. I’m a mix of a plotter and a pantser. I obviously have to know where the story is going to end up but sometimes when I start writing scenes they take me in a completely different place than I had intended. Stubborn characters and all that! But as much as they love leading me on a merry chase, I have to wrangle them under control, and that’s where my writing journal comes in.
One night, I was about half-way through Book Two and I realized I had gone down enough unexpected paths that I needed to set aside time to actually sit down and adjust the original outline I’d sketched out in my head. For some reason, writing outlines on a computer does NOT work for me at all. I have flashbacks to five-paragraph essays and my 11th grade English class. *shudders* But putting pen to paper and jotting down even the key plot points for each character in my journal helps me solidify exactly what I want from them and where I want to LET them take me (instead of them running roughshod).
This may sound obvious to some of you plotters out there, but for this (mostly) pantser it took a lot to figure out how I could make outlines work for me instead of them being a chore that I had to finish before I could get to the fun stuff 😀
My current journal is red which is not my favorite, but it was free which is my favorite price — and now I have a pretty bookmark to go along with it! Tell me – are you a plotter or a pantser? (which keeps correcting to panther, which let me tell you is pretty cool.) Check out the pic on my instagram – and say hello!!
All the love,
Bri