A trip to the farmer’s rally lands me near an early morning political rally.  We have such a hotly contested governor’s race, the incumbent has already retained a lawyer to dispute the results next week.  Me?  I just want my vegetables. 

I also spotted the more adorable beagle dressed up for Halloween.  He’s wearing a top hat with a striking red ribbon and a little waistcoat.  He had enormous round eyes and was very intent on not going where the owner wanted!

Writing on and off all afternoon.  I’m struggling enough with the scenes I’m working on that near the end of the day, past when I usually write, I think about why.  I think it’s because I’m in a slow descending low point for the character and I haven’t put in the why this is happening.  So I spend my last 30 minutes typing in random questions to myself to see if I can jar loose what I’m missing.

In the meantime…

Since we’re about to head into Nano, I’ll start some pantsing tips.  Pantsing is one of those techniques of writing that’s dismissed outright by a lot of writers because they don’t comprehend how you can create a story without outlining it first.  Whereas, I don’t understand how someone can figure out the story before they write it.

For the record, I have done a completed story with an outline, though the outlining process caused me to break It so badly I tossed the story out and started from scratch.  But according to “knowledgable” writers, the reason I broke it wasn’t the outline itself but how I did the outline (translation: they didn’t know why, but it couldn’t possibly be the outline).

But I’ve learned a tremendous amount now about how to do it since I wrote the Pantsers Guide, enough that I created worksheets for pantsers, and expect that I will continue to learn more.

So I’ll start with this question: Does anyone have a specific question about pantsing a novel?