Planners vs. Pantzers
I've learned there are basically two types of writers in this world: planners and pantzers. Planners write exactly how you think they would write. They make a plan. It can be in the form of an outline, or a storyboard, or a graph, or some other device they find helpful in keeping their thoughts organized. They do character sketches, and maps, and setting studies. They may do interviews or other advanced research. And finally, when all their information is gathered and ordered, they write.
Pantzers, on the other hand, do none of that. They write by the seat of their pants. They open a blank page on their computer, or sharpen a pencil and pull out their trusty yellow legal pad and get to work.
In my normal life, I am a planner. I’m so much of a planner that I've been hired to plan for other people. However, in writing–I am a pantzer. I'm embarrassed to say I'm a pantzer mostly because I was acting as a petulant three-year-old when the idea to write a fiction novel first came to me. I had no interest in writing, particularly writing fiction. I’d been writing technical or educational material most of my adult life and I was tired of it. So write a fiction novel? I didn’t even read a lot of fiction. I was in love with biographies and history books. Fiction? Not me.
But the idea would not leave me alone and for two weeks I had a continuous loop of "Write a fiction novel. Write a fiction novel." pounding away in my head like an old grandfather clock that wouldn’t stop chiming. So, one day, I stomped my three-year-old little foot and said, “Fine. I’ll do it. But here are the rules: This story only has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It doesn’t have to be good. AND, I’m not going to plan. I’m just gonna write.”
I thought I was talking to myself. I wasn’t.
Since that day, it’s become very clear to me the voice I heard in my head was not my own. It was the Holy Spirit prompting me to do something He wanted me to do. And you may think it unfortunate that I laid down those rules for writing, but God knew what He was doing. He knew how to motivate me to write in the way I should be writing. You see, if I had agreed to write a novel initially, if I thought it was a fabulous idea, I would have been a planner. I would have planned so much that I’d know exactly what was to happen in each book, chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph. There would have been no room for spontaneous creativity, or flexibility, or divine inspiration.
But, as a pantzer, all boundaries were removed. I was not confined to a structure of my own creation. Instead, my imagination was allowed to roam free, hand-in-hand or keyboard-to-
keyboard with the Holy Spirit. He is my co-author and by being a pantzer, I’ve allowed Him to have His say. He’s all over the pages. From the names of characters, to incidents that happened to them, to the setting itself in that wonderful town of Eastport, Maine.
In the future, I’ll be sharing a few specific things that have happened so you’ll know just what I’m talking about, but for now–that’s the loafdown.
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