Seat of Your Pants: The restart

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m glad you stopped by. This month, as you’ll well know by now, we’re talking about writing by the seat of your pants—and how that even works, to begin with. It’s something I’m often asked, if I’m honest, probably because there are a lot of people out there who think there’s only one way to write, and that’s to outline. Well, those people are wrong, and I’m here to tell you all about the way I write—by the seat of my pants.

By now, we’ve gotten a fair way into our stories. So if you haven’t been checking into the blog as often as you should, be sure to click back and check out the rest of the series!

Today?

Seat of Your Pants: The restart

I questioned whether or not I should include this part, in the series. It was questionable, because it doesn’t always happen. Sure, it will inevitably happen to everyone who writes this way, as it will probably happen to everyone who outlines, but it doesn’t have to happen, and it definitely doesn’t happen every time.

But because it does happen, it’s something that I thought you should know about, too.

If you’re a seat of your pants writer, then I’m sure you already know: we start over. When things just aren’t going right, when the story is crumbling in all the wrong directions and nothing seems to be going the way we meant, when we lose the connection we once had with the story, when there’s just no spark in it anymore, nothing to keep us linked to it like we once were… we start over.

Sometimes we restart the same story, other times we start on something altogether new. It varies, from case to case, and changes depending on the reason why we’re restarting, but if you’re wanting to try writing by the seat of your pants, then you should know. At some point, you will have to restart a story. And it’s okay, when you do.

See, the thing that you have to understand, is that writers who write like a deer in the headlights, who write by the seat of their pants, are incredibly accustomed to what you might think of as failure. Only, we don’t think of it that way. If we had to start over, it doesn’t mean we failed. It just means we probably didn’t go about writing the story the way we were supposed to. We’ll try again, and hopefully we’ll get it right that time.

And sure, it can be frustrating at times. Sometimes we struggle with it, a lot, but it always comes down to that: the story has to be written the right way, or else it just won’t work out, and we’ll have to start over again.

Eventually, you get better at spotting the times when you’ll have to start over, from earlier on in the writing process. Trust me. You will.

[love]

{Rani Divine}