Swapped from plotting every scene to just writing and it's night and day

I spent like 3 years planning a novel with color coded index cards and a whole timeline in Google Sheets. Finally got sick of it and just started typing whatever came to mind for a short story about a bakery in Portland. That story got accepted by a lit mag in under 2 weeks. Anyone else find that overplanning kills the fun of writing?

4 comments

4 Comments

jake74716d agoMost Upvoted

Wait, hold on - a bakery story in Portland? And it got accepted in under 2 weeks? That's insane! I've been sitting on a half-planned detective novel for like 4 years now, and I've rewritten the outline like 8 times. Every time I try to write the actual words, I freeze up because my notes say the coffee shop scene needs to foreshadow something that happens 200 pages later. It's like I built the whole skeleton but forgot to put any meat on the bones, you know?

felixm2916d ago

Oh man, I totally get what you mean. I read something once by Stephen King where he said plotting is for people who are scared of the blank page, and that always stuck with me. There's something about just letting the story happen that feels more alive, you know? @charles_baker28 nailed it - people act like writing has to be this huge complicated thing when really it's just putting one word after another. Idk, maybe it's just me but the more I plan the more I talk myself out of writing anything at all.

charles_baker2816d ago

People make writing sound like brain surgery sometimes lol.

henryt1816d ago

yo for real @charles_baker28 i tried planning once and just ended up confusing myself with notes lol