There are predominantly two methods used for writing novels: Outlining and Pantsing. Outlining is pretty self explanatory. You form a skeleton for your story, you lay out all of the necessary details ahead of time and fill in the blanks, perhaps wing it here and there, but you don’t start until you have an idea of where the story will end. Pantsing (which is probably one of my favorite terms for some reason or another) is where you sit down with maybe one or two ideas and just write by the seat of your pants, following the story where ever it would lead. For me I prefer to do a little of both in my writing, almost like having points on a map. I have some ideas or plot points that I know that I want to include, but there is plenty of room for improvising if the muse strikes.
When it came down to my own life, well, I preferred to have all of my details finely tuned and plotted out ahead of time. I didn’t just want points on the map, I wanted to know the whole route, plus the back roads or short cuts that could pop up along the way. I didn’t want to leave any detail out. You only get one shot at life, so you might as well plan to make it worthwhile.
You can only imagine what happened when my perfectly plotted plan completely and utterly caught fire, burned down, and fell apart right in front of me. It wasn’t that anything traumatic happened that caused my life to suddenly veer off. I simply ended up at a crossroads and I realized that I had no idea what I actually wanted to do. My perfectly outlined road map was perfectly useless. Whenever I would pray to God for direction I always expected a clear road sign to pop up and lead my down the right avenue, but instead of direction all I heard was simply, “Trust me.”
Jeremiah 29:11 starts out saying, “For I know the plans I have for you.” What God was telling me was that He had plans for me, better plans that I could ever come up with for myself, plans that would make even the most epic story pale in comparion, but they were plans that I didn’t know and wouldn’t know until I was in the middle of them. For someone who subscribed wholeheartedly to the outliner camp it took several long years of struggling before I finally learned let go of needing to have complete control over my life’s path.
It isn’t about the destinations, the points on the map, that makes life worth living. Instead it’s about what happens along the way, the journey between point A and point B, and the side roads that you take, that is what it’s all about. That is where the real stories happen.
