Life Plotter or Life Pantser?
Ever have to pull something out of your...*ahem*...I mean ever have to throw something together at the last minute and do an emergency presentation, preparation or project? I do it a lot.
Sometimes I do it to cover for people who are unexpectedly ill—like the time my husband, who is deathly afraid of public speaking, woke up with an honest to goodness 103 degree fever on the day he had to present a scholarship at graduation ceremonies. I put on the only dress I owned at the time, sat through hours of boring…I mean inspiring talks about futures and prospects and grabbing the world by the tail. Those were the days when some people still went naked under their graduation robes and threw the robe off upon receiving their diploma, but alas, I didn’t even have that to entertain me. Finally, after the seventieth scholarship presentation, I walked to the mike, stared out over the nodding crowd and, with my voice shaking, gladly presented the corporate scholarship to a person who later completed exactly one semester of college before dropping out.
Usually my emergency presentations are my own fault, though. For being a linear thinker, and a plotter, I do tend to procrastinate. Taxes? I'll be finding my important papers on April 13th. On a good year. Christmas cards...those would be New Year's cards. In college, there were times (busy times, granted) when I would wait until the day before the ten page geology report was due, pick my topic, research it, write and edit at the same time, while typing on a manual typewriter with a gunky bottle of White Out as the only margin between me and tons of errors on the final copy. Of course my final copy was so covered with correction fluid that it weighed several ounces more than it should have and would have shattered if it had been dropped.
I could go on. And on. When I'm busy, I live my life on the edge. What can I say? That’s what makes me a good writer. I embrace the deadline (and I mean a close embrace)—two of which are coming up shortly—one for revisions and one for a manuscript. Time stretches before me, ready to be filled with other emergencies, until that day that I say Hokey smokes! I have a deadline! I am always, of course, amazed that time has passed while I was accomplishing other things and now I’m almost out of it.
And do I need to mention that my most pervasive nightmare is the one where I sign up for the class (usually Calculus or Spanish 3), forget to go to class and then have to pass the final? Either that, or I have the lead in a play and neglect to learn my lines. It’s the way I am.
So what are you? A life planner or a life panster?
I'm a planner...
Not to say I can't "pants" now and then if I have to, but a deadline to me basically means planning so that I can get things in no less than 2 weeks early, and maybe more than that (I'm working on books now due in August and next year, and they'll be out of the way much earlier). When I taught, I always knew well ahead what would be, and things always got done. This was my way of protecting my time -- still is. I know I need certain amounts of downtime and free time, to have other activities, and a plan is the way I make sure work gets done and doesn't take over life, or that I have time for everything I want to do, as well as what I need to do. My teaching buddies always teased me because I was rarely behind in grading, my desk was always neat. LOL
My tax papers are already organized, btw. *G*
When it comes to vacations, my day, my week, a family dinner, I usually have at least an idea of what's going on, coming up, and I can be flexible, sorta. Mike has struggled with me a little to be more spontaneous, especially when it comes to vacations, etc. I tend to think, well, we're putting all this time and money into going away, let's make sure we have the lay of the land and ideas of what to do, what there is, etc. We compromise by having planned days and open days, though that said, I am not the kind of traveler who can just go along with someone else's plans -- no cruises where they tell me how much time I have in a certain place or allow for regimented activities. I like to be off the beaten path. I also enjoy wandering... though within a general area that I know I'm wandering in, LOL.
I guess I plan, but I have to make my OWN plan, not go with someone else's. LOL
Sam
Believe it or not, I love to
Believe it or not, I love to plan things out and I have a rather anal planner with me at all times, but since I've always been good at shooting from the hip, I tend to rely on that ability. Off the cuff speech? No problem. (I've come a long ways from the graduation ceremony nerves, lol.)
My daughter is just like you in her academics. She has everything done weeks before it's due. When I tell her how I would write my research papers, I can see she thinks I'm trying to kid her. My son, on the other hand, knows I'm not kidding because he embraces my method. Chip off the old block.
Love the compromise with planned days and open days. Great idea! I think a planner should be with a panster--it helps both of them free their more tightly bound side and experience another side of life.
Writing
Thing is, I'm only recently learning to be a planner when it comes to the *content* of my writing. I've always planned schedule, but I never planned content in detail past the synopsis (which even when a synop is detailed, it's still very general, considering even a 25 page synop is only 10% or less of a complete ms). So I am turning those planning instincts to content now, and it's been very interesting, and I have to say, productive (like our character profiles).
Sam
I wonder if that's a writer
I wonder if that's a writer growth thing--as you write more, you begin to explore other methods of creating, since you are now confident in the tried and true? I know as a newbie I was trying to grab onto anything that worked, and when I found something, I took it and ran with it. I am a plotter more than a pantser when it comes to writing, so I guess it's the opposite of my life.
Planner. Definitely
I didn't stand a chance, really. I'm a first-born Virgo girl with a Type-A personality. I like plans, spreadsheets, goals, timelines, and directions printed before I get in the car.
When I started writing I didn't plan a thing and am now seeing the error of my ways. I was so intent on getting the story down, and oh here's this cool scene idea I really need to write! that I just didn't think about planning and how it would make writing easier. Now I'm embracing my inner plotter, but that may be because I can finally trust the words will come...and doing the prework makes things much easier in the end!
Margaret
Good for you, Margaret. I
Good for you, Margaret. I know about the ambling story. And the cool scene that doesn't add to the story, but it happened and it was cool...
Interesting about how we tend to approach writing and life in opposite ways. Maybe it is way to set a suppressed part of us free.
Pantser, unfortunately...
I'd love to be a planner, but I'm so not. And I'm a horrible procrastinator, so I'm sure those two are somehow related. I just missed the boat when they were handing out the planning/organizing thing... Oh well! My poor husband ;) Thankfully he plans enough for the both of us :) Whew!
Where do I get one of those
Where do I get one of those planning organizers in my life? :)
Luck of the draw?
Uh? Hire one? Not sure, but I'm keeping mine ;)
Pantser dragged kicking and screaming into plotterdom
Sounds like your college experience and mine would get along very well. I think I craved the terror-induced adrenalin that went with a deadline, especially with writing projects.
But -- ahem -- our taxes are already done. I like to think I don't take writing projects down to the wire anymore either. How could this be? I married an engineer. The. Ultimate. Planner. I drive him cheerfully nuts and he organizes my insanity and mildly influences me. It works*g*.
Nice to know I wasn't the only one hogging the white-out, though.
Engineers
My dad is an engineer. My brother is an engineer. My daughter graduated third in her civil engineering class. Engineers do tend to make one at least fake being organized, don't they?
terror-induced adrenaline Now we're talking!
Species unto themselves . . .
So you understand the breed*g*. My husband's family is positively infested with engineers and my son seems to be following in their footsteps. No complaints.
Just about everyone on my
Just about everyone on my dad's side of the family is an engineer of some sort. Except him!!! It is always interesting to get a group of them together, LOL!
And then there's the downside...
The downside to being too much of a planner, such as I am, is that when your plan goes kablooie you sort of stand and stare for a while, and don't do anything. Deer in headlights -- what happened to my plan??? LOL
That's been my day. I thought I was meeting a friend for lunch, I had been thinking about the day for several days now, looking forward to it, taking the time off, planned how to organize my time to get things done yesterday and this morning... went to the restaurant, spent an hour and a half there, had lunch anyway, came home to check email and realize I read her email wrong -- she'd said Friday. And Friday is not a day I planned for that, so now it throws me off, LOL.
So, my mindset for the afternoon was just blown. I wasn't in the frame of mind to work, since that wasn't my plan for the day, and I've bounced a little after spending like 3 hours doing email, blogging, and just puttering around. Accomplished absolutely nothing. Maybe will do a little work tonight.
But that's kind of the dark side of being a planner, when you adhere to a plan like I do, you really integrate it into your brain, I think being this way is just kind of who I am (I'm never late, usually organized, etc) and when things get screwed up, even if I'm the one who screwed them up, it takes me a little while to rebound.
Things like the blogs, etc I can do -- have done more than my share of last-minute, forgotten blogs, so I can add something *into* the plan, but I have a hard time having entire plans derailed...
Sam
Kim Van Meter blogged about
Kim Van Meter blogged about writing even when your life is off rail. Just fake it and then fix it later. That's what I'm trying to do when something throws me for a loop and I can't write. You're smart to plan some extra time to accommodate the off-rail days.
True...
I hadn't really thought about that but yes, the long range planning, dealines, etc makes it easier not to panic when I have dead days, or even dead weeks, LOL, or when things go crazy, and they often do...
Sam
A little of both, I guess.
I plan and I plan and I plan....and I don't *do* until the last minute!! I even plan to plan, LOL!! I love giving presentations. I plan and plan in my head, but don't ever get it down on paper/computer until the last minute. I love spreadsheets and order....but do I do them head of time? Nope, I just think about them ahead of time. I think a lot about doing them, too. Someone commented that they are good at shooting from the hip and they rely on that. Yep, that's me!! I know I can pull it off! I always do. Speaking of that, I have a presentation to give on Thursday...
:-)
Cathy
High five, Cathy. I think
High five, Cathy. I think we be sisters!
It is good to have
It is good to have like-minded company. ;-)
I'm a panster. I take life
I'm a panster. I take life as it comes.
I envy you that, Estella.
I envy you that, Estella. In spite of my tendency to let things slide while I finish up others, I plan and plan. And then I shoot from the hip. I worry a lot, too. Trying to get over that, you know?
Definitely a Planner
Yeah, not much spontaniety here. I've already received my tax returns (an incentive to getting them in early was the word "return".) I plan vacations pretty rigorously, right down to museum opening times and admission fees. When we were in Europe, I had our 10-day itinerary planned out in hourly increments. My husband wasn't thrilled that I'd only allotted two hours for him to explore a Celtic ring fort (it's a grassy mound with some rocks...how much time does one need?), but I can be flexible; I gave him three hours, but he only ended up needing two. When it comes to my writing, I'm definitely a planner...I have the whole word-tracker spreadsheet thing going, my 40-page "roadmap" synopsis close by to keep me on track...and lots of stickies on my desk to remind me of my deadline.
I'm kind of like that at
I'm kind of like that at conventions. I definitely have a plan and an hourly schedule. I like it. I have also added a count down gadget with a hunky guy on it on my homepage to keep that deadline in front of me.
exception
When I'm shoved way out of my comfort zone, I will plan. Conferences, I know where I'm going at every hour of the day and what I will be wearing. I'm giving my first talk on Saturday (help) and I'm planning that rigorously (and I know what I'm wearing*g*). The writing and stuff that I choose naturally to do . . . sliiiiides somewhat*g*.
Hey, good luck at your first
Hey, good luck at your first talk. :)
Thanks:)
Thanks -- I've been practicing. My dog is very impressed*g*.
Pantser
I buy new calenders every January. I commit to color coding every child's activities with a different color and the DH and mine in a rainbow of flavors. Er..colors. I make sure my calendar, the family calendar and the DH's calendar match. I insert every birthday I can remember. This plotting strategy lasts until roughly my son's birthday...Janaury 15.
I try to be a plotter. It looks good. But then I ask myself, what would my husband do without the crazy woman yelling..."Let's go, let's go, let's go!" The adrenaline spike is kind of like extreme sports. Except you don't have to wear a helmet.
-Tasha
Tasha, you slay me!
Tasha, you slay me!
Same goes!
The feeling is entirely mutual.
-Tasha
High five!
High five!
I'm a planner in life,
I'm a planner in life, pantser in writing.
I *plan* to write every day. What I write, though, is totally pantsed!
And like Sam, if something interrupts my plans, I'm not always sure what, exactly to do!
M
Read in bed!
www.meganhart.com
All of the above!
You guys are killing me! I agree on so many levels. I thought I was a panster as I read Jeannie's post...but I think I'm a planning procrastinator. Oh, honey! I can plan with the best of them, and lists...sheesh, lists everywhere. But the morning something is due, I'm running out of the house...purse and hair flying as I'm scooping up whatever has to go with me and a toaster struedel stuffed in my mouth. And as usual I was probably up all night finishing whatever...but I can hit that deadline everytime. I tend to do my best work under stress.
Yes! A planning
Yes! A planning procrastinator. Chelle, you've given a name to our way of life!
Have to admit...
I don't get the having a list and not using it... how can that happen? You have a list. . .you have to use it, don't you??? LOL
Now you understand why Mike lives in fear of me making lists...
Sam
ROFL!
My dh gives me such a hard time because I'll be great about making the list...then forget it on the counter.
Sam, you use the list for a
Sam, you use the list for a while, until you get distracted by a shiny object. Then you abandon list. When things get hairy, you make a new list, or take up the old where you left off...:)