which one are you?

In case you missed it, there's a great discussion going on over at Timothy Hallinan's Blog Cabin on outlining (plotting) vs. not outlining (pantsing, as in 'by the seat of your'). It's timely for me, because I've recently discovered that I'm a plotter, which I never would have thought true of myself, given how little I plan anything else in my life.

I'm just getting to the end of my outline for Nine Days, and am (figuratively) slapping myself. See, I already wrote the book a couple of times -- I estimate I've probably written at least 100K words, some of it usable, some of it garbage -- but I did all of that in a Pantsing manner, and just could not get it to come together. I started draft three some months ago, got all the way through it, read it back, and realized AGAIN that the story line wasn't cohering. Out of sheer fatigue, I started a new draft in abbreviated form, in a hurry to get to the messy parts. I realized about a week into it that plot holes and missed opportunities were jumping out at me. So I've kept going in that vein, developing my abbreviated draft into a Narrative Summary -- a kind of 'cliff notes' version of the book. In other words, an outline.

As draft number...four? five? looms, I admit to being a little scared. If this pass doesn't result in a grokable story line, I'm afraid I'll go jump off a cliff. Not really -- I'll probably just bitch and moan some more, and start again, but I would really like to have at least one finished, readable manuscript in hand before I croak. Why? I don't know. It's just one of those things that seems to have grabbed me by the DNA and won't let go.