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Went from plotter to pantser after 30 consecutive outline fails
Every single outline I made for 3 months ended up with me staring at a blank page by chapter 4, then last week I just started typing with zero plan and finished 5k words in one sitting. Anyone else find their writing style flips completely when they stop forcing it?
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juliagonzalez2mo ago
...and honestly that tracks with something I heard on a writing podcast a few months back. They had a guest who talked about how your brain gets tired of making the same kind of decisions over and over, so if you've been forcing outlines for a long time, your mind just rebels and wants the opposite. Kind of like how I can eat pizza every day for a week and then suddenly the thought of it makes me sick. I've seen that happen with other writers too, where they bounce between being a plotter and a pantser every couple of years, almost like a cycle. The key for me was to stop labeling myself one way or the other and just pay attention to what felt less like a chore on any given day. So congrats on the 5k, that's a real win, and I'd say ride that wave as long as it lasts, because the same thing happened to me and I got a whole novel out of it before the switch flipped again.
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