There is something to be said for both choosing to wing it and planning.
For most of my writing career, I have been a pantser.
If you are unfamiliar with this term, what it means is that I mostly write by the seat of my pants. I sit down at the keyboard, take an idea from my head, and put it on the screen.
This is still largely how I create my blog posts. But not entirely.
There is something to be said for having a plan.
For the longest time, I was leery of planners. Planners create anywhere from a basic outline to a chapter-by-chapter outline before they ever get to writing.
I’ve discovered that working from a plan doesn’t shackle you like I feared it did. Having a plan, in fact, has given me much more room to create – because now, I know where I am going.
This is why my Forgotten Fodder series has such a clear plot. For the first time, I plotted out each book, chapter by chapter.
While that included some detail and key elements, it didn’t in any way take away from my creative process. Having that focus, I believe, made it even easier and clearer.
Even my blogs, mostly written by me from the seat of my pants, follow a plan. I have a topic, a keyword phrase – and that’s enough to work from.
Writing is not the only place, however, where you might face this choice. The argument of pantsers vs planners can also be summed up more broadly as wing it vs plan it.
Much as I have largely been all about choosing to wing it over the years, I am starting to increasingly see the value of planning it.
A place for everything and everything in its place
The world is all about opposites. Yin and yang. Black and white, and so on.
Over the years, when I write about positivity, it’s been shifting away from focusing on the extremes of positive and negative, and more towards the flexible middle between them. Rather than opposite sides of a coin, I’m looking at them as opposite sides of a cylinder.
All the extremes you can think of exist in this way. Short and tall, fat and thin, wide and narrow, good and bad, and so on. Between the extremes, there is always a lot of stuff that exists.
Why am I bringing this up? Because by and large, you and I exist somewhere between every extreme. We are not only one thing – we are a blend.
Frequently, you’re presented with either/or choices. And they tend to be towards extremes. Politicians are a perfect example. Particularly as the parties have gotten increasingly strict in their doctrines and rhetoric.
Maybe you wing it. Perhaps you plan it. But I would bet that both are applicable – it just depends on the situation and circumstances in question.
For example – most comedians have their act well worked out. They have their bits and routines well-rehearsed and set. However – audience reaction will impact that. Hecklers might need to be shut down. If a bit is just not hitting for one reason or another – they can wing it and close it early, shift it, or otherwise alter the plan.
This is true of many different industries.
Wing it, plan it, whatever
As a creator, you might encounter times when you have no idea how to do a thing you might desire to do.
This blog? It took me more than one try to hit upon a topic I desired to write about. The first couple of notions felt trite and pointless to me. As I thought about how best to wing it – the topic came to mind. And here you are.
I love to do improv and improvise. If a plan comes apart – I can wing it. Pivoting is not without its challenges. But I can wing it if the plan doesn’t work as planned.
As I learned when I started doing fencing melee (group) combat long ago – no plan survives contact with the enemy.
Conversely – having no plan at all, and purely winging it, can also fall completely flat.
Without a plan, you might not have a direction. As you wing it – whether it’s a story, a speech, some other piece of art or creative work – you might hit a roadblock you utterly didn’t expect. And, with no plan but to wing it, you are now stuck. Or even trapped.
That’s not to say this applies to everyone. Some people, I suspect, can truly just wing it regularly. But for most of us – we need at least the vaguest outline of a plan.
Maybe you need some bullet points. Perhaps you need a couple of paragraphs with key notes. Or maybe you need everything laid out, word for word. There’s no right or wrong answer.
Flexibility is the key to sustainable creativity. A plan is good, but it needs to have room for alteration, improvement, redirection, and the like. How much you need to wing it might be a lot – or just a transition to get from plan ‘A’ to plan ‘B’.
Plan it, wing it – just do it
No matter what it is you desire to do – just do it.
One of the biggest issues that I know some planners encounter is over-planning. You work so hard to get all the stars aligned perfectly with the plan that you won’t act without that perfection.
The reality is –perfection, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Perfectly imperfect is as perfect as it will get. Plan to a point – but then, you have got to do it.
Hence why the ability to wing it is important. Because no plan will survive contact with the enemy. And the enemy takes lots of different forms. Many of which are intangible and far from obvious.
Maybe once in a blue moon – on the second Tuesday in a month with just a 3-4 letter name – the plan works perfectly. Exactly as laid out. But for that one super-rare, virtually unpredictable time – the plan will hit one snag or another.
Even if you have a backup plan, a tertiary plan, or any other alternate(s) set-up – you might have to wing it to make the shift.
Whatever the case might be – don’t plan so much that you don’t do it. If you can wing it completely and make it fly – go for it. But you need to do it to it if you are going to do anything at all.
Plans are all well and good. Winging it is a viable choice. But all of this is moot if you do not do it – whatever it is.
Plan it, wing it if you need to, but do it. Don’t let the world be without that thing you desire to share because you haven’t gone ahead and done it and shared it.
Thank you for being part of this wild ride.
This is the one-hundred and fifty-ninth article exploring the ongoing creative process. Please take a moment to check out the collection of my published works, which can be found here.
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