Have you ever looked at one of those optical illusion puzzles where you have to kind of let your eyes quit focusing and look past the surface of the paper until suddenly an entire complex image takes shape? I remember the first one I ever saw. It was poster-sized and depicted the major events of the life of Christ. At first, it just looked like dots and whorls and squiggles, but then, almost without warning, the picture, in all its depth and complexity, was there in front of me.

That’s kind of how life is for me as a pantser writer. In case this term is new to you, the writing process can be thought of as a spectrum. On one end are plotters, or people who know the entire story, beginning to end, of their books. They know how all the subplots work together and who did what to whom and why. On the other end are pantsers, who start a story with little or no clear idea of where that story is going to end. They may have a point B to go with the point A they’ve just created, but they may not even have that. Most people fall somewhere along that spectrum between the two extremes. I definitely fall almost all the way onto the pantser end.

It’s a bit of an adventure writing the way I do, because not knowing how things are going to work out at the end means not knowing how all these plot strings I’m creating are going to end up tying together, or even if they will. So far, they have every time, but every time it still feels like maybe they won’t. That’s definitely true with the book I’m working on right now. I was getting to the point that I was convinced that it would finally happen. I’d get to the end and the strings wouldn’t tie together. The story wouldn’t make sense. I was starting to think I was going to have to scrap this whole book and start over again.

Until today. Sarah was at work and Lauren was upstairs most of the time, so I had all day to think and write and go back and forth and read and rewrite. As the day went on, the whole thing finally came into focus. I know who did it and why and how and even when. And I know exactly how the story will end. And that feels so good.

I’ve considered trying out plotting. I have lots of models of outline forms I could use. I probably will try it someday, just to see how it works. But I just can’t imagine it would be as fun knowing when I start on page one just how it’s going to end a few hundred pages later. Yes, it’s a bit of a scary feeling not knowing for sure whether I’ll be able to pull it all together, but I’ll trade that stress for the exultation I feel when the picture finally gels and I know how all the different storylines mesh.

Now that I know, I can’t wait to share it with all of you!