That Pesky Big Picture

I've known for some time that my preferred writing technique is seat-of-my-pants. Oh, I have the basic idea of where I'm headed, the beginning, development and ending, and I usually have a few particular scenes in my head, but I don't make intricate charts or outlines. I'd rather write than plan. I find it particularly exciting when I discover serendipitous plot developments while I'm in the middle of writing. They actually seem to come easier when I'm in the process of writing rather than just mapping it out. This may mean that I am certifiably insane, I don't know. But it's the way it works for me. What I've come realize is that this also applies to my editing preferences. I actually enjoy editing individual scenes, paragraphs, sentences, words - the nitpicky little things, the details that are right in front of me. I can feel, almost tangibly, how a little change here and there can improve the flow of a passage or improve the clarity of a sentence's meaning. (I've been doing a merciless search for -ly words in The Keeping-Box and finding a marked improvement by replacing most of them with stronger, more precise phrasing.)

However....when it comes to the large-scale editing, the piecing together of scenes, plot arcs, character development....I cringe. Because it's just so big and overwhelming, and I know that to do it right, I have to step back and do, you know, that organized analytical outlining thingy. (I'm sure it also has to do with the whole murdering your darlings thing, since I'm so attached to just about every word I write that it kills me every time I have to cut out big chunks or alter them drastically. But anyway.)

Oddly, this doesn't translate to a preference for short stories. I love writing big long rambling novels, I just don't like to stop and really consider what I've written. I want to plunge on ahead, heedless of quality or coherence.

( The point of all this )