I’ve been a plotter, I’ve been a pantser. But at the end of the day I realise I am just a plantser and would like to reject binaries. All stories are different. The way you write each one is different. Sometimes the planning comes first. Sometimes the impulse comes first, like an earworm or an itch. It sneaks into your brain like a love letter you’d write to the ideal love you’d never met or lost somewhere in the corridors of an eldritch dream. The first novella I wrote that would later be a part of the mise-en-abyme of Watermyth was like this. I was recovering from a near-death-experience because my asthma had become so bad (living near a heavily industrialised zone meant air quality was deleterious), and I was also grappling with other stuff I shall not get into here. I was missing the sea, and missing swimming regularly during that time. I had written many things and poems about swimming, about Grandmother Whale. So much so that someone in one of my online communities called me The Mermaid and did a couple or so paintings with me as a Mermaid. I was dreaming of the Ocean, dreaming of whales and dolphins. I’d wake up refreshed but pining for the sea.
Inspired by that, during my first NaNoWriMo (2003), I just wanted to sit down and write without an outline (I’d made plenty in the years of working on my Sesen novels and short stories). I called it my “Everything But The Kitchen Sink” method. I wrote like I was diving into the water and etched chapter after chapter about a woman becoming a mermaid, plunging into sonar, spiralling into saltwater. I made of that sonar a novel-length lovesong for the Ocean. And I had Amara Ratnasabapathy (then named the Saltwater Orphee) go through her own sort of afterlife. It became a rather philosophical meditation of nearly 60k words, with a lot of other mythogenic elements. And then I set it aside. I knew I wanted to turn Saltwater Orphee into a larger novel at some point but I was not sure when. But some references to her were already creeping into the hypertext project; the fact that she’d saved Maryani (Vita’s shady and abusive mother), the fact that she’d become a legend amongst the people of Yrejveeree — but to work all of that out, to ensure continuity, that is where the outlining and planning happened.
It’s really not rocket science or something new that I am saying; a lot of authors outline and plot things. But they also have that moment of pure impulse, whether it is pure inspiration or coming out of some deep emotional response and despair. At some point, you work through angles and make notes. That’s all it is, really. This is why I say I am a plantser. My years of teaching creative writing made me more methodical about writing and I cannot understate how constructing beat sheets helped me as a writer, how much other tips and tricks I picked up along the way helped me. That is what a craft is*, learning what works for you from people with more experience. And leaving aside what does not serve you or the story. Some people plot. Some people write on impulse (and plenty of my earlier work was almost automatic-writing-like). And some, like me, negotiate and dance in the spaces in between such binaries. These days if I get an idea I scribble it down, I think about it furiously and work through angles in my head. I make notes. If necessary I make charts. I argue with my characters. And if a voice is strong enough that it wants to be heard, I start with that POV first. Which is what I am doing right now in Rosemirror, writing out a chapter that is in Regya’s Voicy McVoicypants POV.
I think if many of us were completely honest with ourselves, we would see that we’re somewhere between artificially constructed polarities. There are no absolutes in the writing process, really. It’s not about us. It’s about the story and what it wants.
As always, this mini-essay is not meant to be prescriptive in any way. Take what serves you, ignore the rest.
Amara’s story will be more fully explored in Book 2, Rosemirror, along with more revelations about Regya’s life. To buy Book 1 of the Cantata of the Fourfold Realms, Watermyth, you can click here.
*The next Lyceum Notes post will be a love letter of sorts to craft books that became my writing companions along the way. Spoiler: I tend to gravitate to process-driven craft books, not prescriptive ones (although I like to argue with a few).