Are you a planner? Do you have to lay out all the steps to whatever goal you are working on and tick them off one by one? Do you create lists and spreadsheets for everything?
Or do you tend to jump into a project and see where it leads? Go with the flow? Do you find yourself saying things like “Let’s see what happens if I do this?”
Does this sign make you want to try it to see what happens? Or do you need to plot how to avoid the consequences?
In writing we often use the terms plotter and pantser (someone who flies by the seat of their pants). A plotter carefully plots their story, creating an outline to follow, setting up benchmarks, planning chapters and scenes, sometimes in extensive detail. A pantser, on the other hand, may have no more than a sentence or a phrase to start with, and some idea of how the story ends (even if it’s only “they live happily ever after”).
I am sure there are analogs to these styles in almost any creative pursuit. People who follow recipes with the precision of research chemists, and those who pick up a spice bottle, shrug and toss in a spoonful, or a handful. Knitters who read a pattern and carefully replicate the tools, supplies, and stitches, and those who grab a random pair of needles, some yarn in an interesting color or texture, and dive in.
I love making these tiny bags. I pull out far more embellishments that I can possibly use and just play with them until I have something I like. The results are a surprise, even to me.
Both approaches have their adherents, both work for different people, or for the same person at different times, and there is certainly room between these two extremes for all sorts of variations on a theme.
Personally, when it comes to creative pursuits, I am mostly a pantser. (Confession time: I have published seven murder mysteries and in every one I wasn’t sure who the bad guy – or girl – was until late in the story. I had my suspicions, but I didn’t start out with the idea that person X was the killer and work toward that conclusion, I just kept going until I figured it out.)
I know. I hear all you plotters out there reacting as though I just ran my fingernails down the chalkboard, a la Quint in Jaws. You need your plans and outlines; that’s how you roll. Believe me, I understand. I feel the same way when someone talks about character bios, or maps and charts.
But sometimes, even for you plotters, there comes a point where you get stuck. When you can’t see your way to the end of the project even though you know where you’re headed; when you have figuratively or literally painted yourself into a corner.
You do not know how to reach your goal.
What you do know, however, is how to take the next step.
Some next steps are more dramatic than others, but they all lead to the future.
One step.
One sentence.
One sequence of stitches.
One cut or join of lumber.
One note of music, or stroke of a paintbrush.
A single step.
And after that step? You know how to take one more.
It’s like taking a long car trip at night. You can’t see the whole way there (well, unless you’re in one of those flat Midwestern states that ends in a vowel) and even if you could it’s dark and your headlights don’t reach that far. But you can see the next little stretch of road, or the next curve, and with each foot of road that passes under your tires you can see an additional foot into the distance.
Sometimes that is all you can do, and that is enough. You work your way through the dark stretch one simple step at a time, trusting you will find your way, until you can see a clear stretch ahead. The road straightens out for a bit, and your high beams illuminate what’s ahead.
Driving into the dark you accept that you can only see a little way ahead. Learn to trust your creativity the same way!
You may run into another dark and twisty stretch of road, another point where you can only see one step ahead, but each time that happens you can take a single step and work your way through the darkness.
And the best part of doing this? (Aside from the obvious fact that you are still moving forward, of course.) You are teaching yourself to believe that you can trust that single step to bring you closer to your goal.
I still have moments of doubt, lots of them. Places where I have written myself into a corner and have no idea how I will get out, times when I am absolutely certain I am going to fail and expose myself as a complete fraud.
But trust me when I say that each time you do this, each time you trust yourself to take a single step, you will move ahead and you will be able to take another step.
This is a lesson every creative person has to learn for themselves, over and over again. For me, even knowing I can do this, even when I can look at the shelf of books and stories that prove I can do this, the moments of despair continue to haunt me.
I just have to remind myself that I have done this before, I have faced these same fears time and again, and I can do it again.
All I have to do is take the next step.