Pantsed Off

I'm writing a book about how to be a successful discovery author!

Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author who is also a librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me (and my dog!) so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium!

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A friend asked me to teach them how to be a pantser.

Unthinkingly, I said “sure!”

I figured it would be a very simple thing for me to do, because all you have to do to be a pantser is this: feel the fear and do it anyway.

…however, I realized quickly enough that such an answer isn't as helpful as we would all like it to be. So, this book is my attempt to give a bit of actual, useful advice on how to be a pantser.

To be honest, I'm not sure why someone would want to be a pantser. I certainly did not want to be one! That is why it has taken me so long to accept the fact that I am, in fact, a pantser. I was told for years—decades—that being a pantser is a recipe for failure. No self respecting professional author is a pantser! But then again, I wonder how much time I would not have wasted second-guessing myself if a book like this had been available when I was younger…

That’s from the introduction of the book I’m working on, By the Seat of Your Pants: Secrets of Discovery Writing. A book that so far only one person has asked for—yet, as I point out above, is a book that might have saved me years of grief and shame as a writer if someone else had written it.

If I’m being totally honest, I’m writing this book out of spite. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been suckered by books or articles claiming they will “help” discovery writers, only to explain condescendingly that the cure is to start with an outline.

As if being a pantser is a fatal condition. Which, rude!

The only book I’ve ever found on how to use discovery writing methods successfully is Dean Wesley Smith’s Writing into the Dark: How to Write a Novel Without an Outline. He’s got a very prescriptivist approach to teaching, which I find a little harsh, but he at least faces the topic head-on. My book is going to be in a tight dialogue with his, since we’re about the only ones I’ve found who have spent time really breaking down the discovery writing process.

The only other person of note talking about this is Becca Syme, of Clifton Strengths for Authors fame, who recently published Dear Writer: Are You Intuitive? In it she addresses intuition in all aspects of an author’s career, including writing and marketing, and I found it incredibly insightful. Until I read her book, I had not fully understood the importance of intuition in the discovery writing process, and will talk about it a lot in my own book.

I especially loved her focus on questioning the premise that “all books are plotted and every aspect of a book is intentional,” which comes back around to the old literary meme, “The curtains were just fucking blue.” That is, sometimes when we put a description in a story, it’s just a color or a tree or a street scene, not a deep exploration of symbolism. It happens!

I have lived my entire life around other writers, and honestly, I think it is far more common for authors to unintentionally include important elements of a story from a place of intuition rather than from ingenious aforethought. It’s easy in retrospect (or during edits) to claim the blue curtains were a conscious choice based on thematic reasons, but…really? Are you sure????

I’ll be talking about that and more as I write this, and I’ll be posting some of my insights here on Substack as I go. I’d love to hear from you about your experiences as a pantser or your forays into discovery writing. Any topics you’d especially like me to break down and cover? Comment and let me know!

Do you want to be one of the first to grab my book, By the Seat of Your Pants: Secrets of Discovery Writing!??!?!?

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