Flying By the Seat of My Pants

Flying By the Seat of Your Pants:

When I first started work on my fiction writing around the beginning of 2012, I basically took a 'fly by the seat of your pants' approach to my writing. For several months ideas for stories and scenes were coming to me quite easily. I was finding my writing times to be a very enjoyable time of my day. I was working alternately on one novella and one novel. When the 'well started to run dry' or I faced a 'mental log jam' on one writing project, I would switch over to the other writing project that I was working on. For a period of time I found this to be an effective method for working on my two writing projects.

I was able to complete a first draft of my novella, Lake Mariposa, by employing this technique.

When it came to my novel in progress, The Cover Up I found that I would need to change my strategy. I found that the 'fly by the seat of your pants' method was resulting in a 'freeze up' of ideas. Having trouble coming up with new ideas and then not knowing how to use them when they did come, was starting to frustrate me.

I found that I had to change my approach. I stopped working on individual scenes for awhile and starting to study some books on writing fiction such as “Writing Fiction for Dummies', 'The Successful Novelist' by David Morrell,

'On Writing' by Stephen King and 'Stein On Writing' by Sol Stein. In upcoming blogs I will write about what I have learned from these books and what I was able to apply to my own writing.