✍️ On Pantsing and Editing and the Ghosts of Me

or, How I’m Still Learning from My First Attempt at Novelling

[Editor’s Note: I first wrote this post in November 2017. I can’t even remember how I stumbled on it, but at some point I saved it to my Substack folder of posts I’m actively writing. I read it over, and thought there were some lessons here for me and maybe you about the novel-writing process and writing in general. You might read this and think that all the work and sacrifices I describe here were all for nothing since the novel is now safely locked away forever. But that’s the point: none of that work was wasted. It all goes into the work I’m doing today.

This post is unchanged from the original except for the images, the header and sub-head (which didn’t exist previously), where I’ve put in links, and these notes. - Graham]

Here’s the downside about pantsing: you never know where you’re going to end up. In the case of my novel, Social Grooming for Higher Primates, the storyline ended up in a twisted heap. Motifs that dead-ended in tunnels. Plot lines that didn’t see the “Bridge Out” sign. New motifs that just started out of nowhere, chugging happily along to the end but with no real beginning.

In other words, the whole novel was a mess.

As I write this, I’m in the middle of taking all those twisted rails and turning them into a single story track. I will say that for the most part, I’m extremely happy with the novel. I read things that I wrote two, three, seven years ago, and I smile to myself. (Don’t let this smile confuse you – I’m still not convinced that anyone outside my circle of one will enjoy it. But that’s for another blog post...) [Editor’s Note: I was right.]

Here are a few things I’ve learned about the process that I want to share with you. I hope it will help anyone out there who’s struggling with their own realization that the story still needs work!

Enjoy the Process

I was discouraged at first. I spent a whole weekend – stayed home from a family trip, as a matter of fact – so I could put on the “finishing touches” before sending out reading copies. Then I found the first little plot problem. Then a motif that I needed to sew together from one side of the book to the other. Then, the solution to another plot problem revealed itself in a thunderclap. Great news, right? Except that it meant ripping up rails from many different spots in the novel and laying new ones.

I spent a couple of weeks after that not writing the novel. Ostensibly, it was to work out some of the problems in my mind before I started going again. That was true, but in retrospect I think I let the discouragement get to me. What I focused on was the fact that even though the story was a mess, I liked the bones of it. So, I get to spend a little more time living in the world of my novel as I worked out the kinks. If you’re enjoying the process – and I most certainly am – there’s nothing wrong with spending more time with the novel! You have the rest of your life after to not write it. [Editor’s Note: I can confirm this.]

Make a Plan

One of the biggest misconceptions about pantsing I’ve found is that people equate it to not having a plan. This is not true. Even way back from my first post on my original blog [Editor’s Note: my old A Few Strong Words blog, still online but no longer active], I had a plan: write a thousand words a day. I didn’t have an outline. I didn’t have a firm idea of how it would end, or even what the next page would hold. But I had a plan for writing.

From the banner of my now-defunct A Few Strong Words blog.

Now, I have a plan for rewriting as well. I’ve started with the smaller stuff – typos, minor inconsistencies, light editing – that I found in my complete read-through. That’s what I’m working on right now. Then, I’ll go back and do some of the heavy lifting – fixing the major plot holes and stringing motifs from one end of the book to the other. This may sound counterintuitive – wouldn’t it be better to get the big things out of the way, and tweak the smaller things later? There is one main reason why I did it this way: ease of finding the problems. Major rewrites will mean the story will change, as will the page numbers. That typo on Page 134 might end up on Page 117 by the end of it, and will be much harder to track down.

Besides, this allows my mind to percolate the plot changes a little longer before I jump in.

Settle in for the Long Haul

Once you’ve identified that there are problems that need work, it doesn’t help to rush through them. The temptation is certainly there – you’ve worked this hard on your novel, it would be nice just to get it done. But that’s not going to do your novel any favours.

If you need to, take a short break like I did. Don’t take too long – you may forget all the things you thought of during your complete read-through. Gather up your creative strength and then get back at it. If you make a plan and you’re enjoying the process, then it’s easier to spend the time you need to make it right.

Bonus Tip: Don’t Give Up on Pantsing

I’ve made no secret of the fact that these “troubles” are a direct result of pantsing. So, wouldn’t the obvious answer be to spend more time outlining? No.

I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed writing this novel. As I said in an earlier post, I spent six weeks trying to outline early in the story development. It didn’t work for me. Besides, your mind can come up with some wonderful new ideas and plot twists as you’re writing that you wouldn’t think of if the whole thing was planned out. The whole end of my novel was a revelation to me. Again, I’m not trying to say that in a bragging way – I’ll leave it up to the readers to say whether or not it truly works. But I like the last section, which was written over the summer months. All I had was a setting, a final destination, and my characters in a big mess. The dots connected for me in a way that I never could have planned.

That’s the great thing about pantsing: you never know where you’re going to end up.

Over to You

There we go, a blast from the past. It’s encouraging for me to see that I’ve been on the right path all along. Or, maybe it’s just reassuring that I’ve been on the same path – I guess technically that doesn’t mean the right path necessarily, lol.

Either way, it’s great to revisit some of the old me. Hope you enjoyed it, too!

On another note, I found out after the last post published that it was Post #100 – a milestone that blew by me. So, I’m celebrating this post, Post #101 instead.

Until next time, keep writing with wild abandon!

~Graham

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