Flying Pants

One of the discussion that I've been having over the last few days with one of my oldest friends has been about the nature of creativity.

I've known him since we in a High School play way back in 1982. Before going off onto different careers in the late 80s, we were in a band and an improv troupe together, wrote songs and skits and critiqued each of these with each other and various other people.

Danny is a novelist, as am I..... However, we've found that we have very different approaches to writing.

Danny's a classic "Pantser"; He loves getting an idea and figuring out where it goes by sitting down and writing, using his 'muse' as his GPS on the trip through the novel, listening to where it says to turn.

Frankly, I blame it on his parents: Classic ex-Hippies who were constantly inventing dinner on the fly at the last moment and who vacationed by opening a map, figuring out how far and back they could get on a couple hundred bucks of gas and randomly picking a destination within that area (I might be exaggerating a tad).

I grew up with Old School shirt and tie/Dress with pearls Conservatives who planned their vacations  and made reservations months ahead.

My Dad was also a Journalist and Ghost Writer/ "Rewrite Man" who wrote untold hundreds of articles and columns in his career, both under his byline and without one.

From him I learned the need to know where you are going in a piece of writing. You need to know what the elements of the writing are going to convey. And you need to deliver on your promise to the reader.

But I  also rebelled in my youth; I wrote poetry in one take, for Open Mic Nights,often finishing the poem on the fly with the spotlight heating up my face. I got up on an improv stage with the barest of suggestions and went down the rabbit hole of a skit with my team mates just to see where it went. 

I spit rhymes and dropped dimes and had the sickest rhythms every damn time...Ok, maybe not THAT...

Somewhere along the line though, Dad won out.

When I write now,I have no need to know what every single character is going  to say on every page for the next hundred pages, but I do know I really feel better if I know where the next few chapters are going, if only in a general way.