Are you an architect or a gardener?

I found my notebook from Polaris! Yeah! Which means that I now have lots and lots of notes so I will spread this out over several weeks. But it also means that I don't have to worry about what I'm going to post as I get back into the swing of school!

Most of you have heard of the terms "plotting" and "pantsing" but at the panel on "Details, Filler, Plot" Brandon Sanderson referenced the terms "Gardener" and "Architect" - a gardener is a pantser. They kind of just let things happen organically, planting seeds as they go, but unsure exactly how the end product will look. The architect is the plotter. They have blueprints and plans and have a fairly good idea what the finished product is going to be, though of course there are always surprises along the way.

I really like those terms. I am a mixture of those two, so maybe I'm an architect of gardens?

One of the panelists also used a quote from Neil Gaiman saying that writing is like "Jumping out of an airplane and knitting a parachute before you hit the ground." Which made me laugh because it is SO true. Whether you're a plotter or a pantser, an architect or a gardener, you are jumping out into the unknown and hoping everything makes sense in the end.

Brandon also said that the best way to learn how to plot a book is to write one that's a total disaster because you didn't plot it right. That will teach you more than going to a hundred panels on plotting or reading a bunch of books.

The one thing that was emphasized over and over (which I mentioned before) is you have to practice. You have to write. If you're in the middle of a story and realize you forgot something, don't let it slow you down. Make a note of it, go back if you can, but avoid the eternal rewrite if it's keeping you from actually finishing. MUST FINISH.

So, are you an architect? Or a gardener? Or a mixture of both?

Finish It

I swear I AM going to do a real post on the writing workshops at Polaris with Brandon Sanderson and the other authors. They were amazing and I have a lot I want to say. I will do it within the next week. There, now I've put it out there, so there's pressure to deliver.

Today I want to offer the one piece of advice that Brandon emphasized over and over again.

Finish.

It doesn't matter how good/bad/unique/original/terrible/cliche/whatever your book is if you never finish it. You can't edit it or do anything real with it if you never finish it.

He said, if you aren't being able to finish, you need to find out what it is that is keeping you from finishing it and get rid of it. FINISH.

This is the thing I am terrible at. I start a bunch of projects and then I get lost halfway through them and feel overwhelmed and don't know what to do. So I go back the beginning and try to rework it, but then I never get past where I've already written. Okay, not never, but it's a consistent problem in my writing life.

One of the panelists (I have this written down somewhere, but I'm too lazy to look it up now) told of a person in their critique group that turned in their first chapter something like 30 times. They'd take the feedback and rework and resubmit it. Over and over. But at the end of the day, they didn't actually have anything real to work with. One chapter and an idea in their head, which, I imagine, became so twisted from trying to incorporate everyone else's ideas, that it wasn't really their idea anymore.

Critique groups are fantastic. Reading partners are the bomb (waves at Lindsey). But if you allow that to keep you from finishing what you've started, you will never write a novel. If you keep rereading and trying to fix the beginning before you have an end, you will never write a novel. If you sit and blog and tweeter and play on Facebook and ignore your WIP, you will never write a novel.

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Sheesh. Talk about convicting. Um, I'm just gonna go work on my book now. I'll catch you guys later.