Has this ever happened to you? You write something that sounds so logical, so perfect, you can't possibly improve upon it, then a few days or weeks or months later you reread it and you're shocked by how bad it is! Well, maybe not bad; it's just that the idea you were trying to convey is lost in all of the rhetoric and hyperbole.

I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me, and I think I've finally figured out what I'm doing. I'm writing using stream of consciousness. I'm letting the words flow out, and more often than not, they come out jumbled. The idea I want to express might be there, it's just buried in all of the verbiage.

Of course all of you old-timers are saying, "That's what rewriting is for, and why we hire editors." I know that. Well, I know it now, but I had to learn it, you see? And what have I learned? I've learned that I'm a plantzer; a pantzer who plans.

For those of you who don't know, a pantzer is a writer who "writes from the seat of his or her pants". It's an analogy taken from flyers--pilots who set off into the unknown without filing a flight plan. They just want to see what's out there, they want to explore. And I can't tell you how much that appeals to the explorer in me. My whole life (and career) I've loved setting off into the unknown, trying to see what's on the other side of the mountain or valley or whatever. So when it comes to writing, I love doing the same. The only thing that gets in my way is the planner in me. Cause even though I love setting off into the unknown, I also love having goals. And in order to have a goal, you must have a plan to achieve that goal.

As most of you know, I began my career making films and television, and it is not an environment that appreciates pantzers. A film shoot must be meticulously planned. As a director, when you walk on the set at seven in the morning there are 250 people waiting for you to tell them what to do. You not only have to have your day planned out, you have to have that day broken down into shots and how you're going to achieve those shots. You actually give your AD (Assistant Director) a shot list that he or she passes out to all of your department heads. And way before that shoot day there were meetings upon meetings upon meetings to discuss how you planned to achieve your goal of making the best film possible. And even before THAT, you started planning that film when you first wrote your screenplay. You spelled out everything about every scene--Interior or Exterior, Day or Night, your location, your characters--it's all there on the page because your department heads will be "breaking down" that script and making lists of what they need to provide. Therefore, screenplays are very cut-and-dried because everything has to be spelled out. Your department heads don't care what your characters are thinking or feeling. They just want to know what prop they'll be holding in their hand, or where your characters live, or what car your characters will be driving. So all you write down in a screenplay is what can be seen and heard because that's all anyone involved in making the film cares about.

And actually, this has been surprisingly helpful as I make the transition from writing screenplays to writing novels. Both screenplays and novels require that you show and not tell. The issue I seem to be having in writing novels is how to communicate that "showing" using language. Yes, screenplays use language, but screenplays use a very specific kind of language, and it is totally different than what you encounter in a novel.

So I'm having to learn how to do that, and in the process, I'm finding myself, more and more, using stream of consciousness as I write--because as I said in the beginning, I do love rushing out into the unknown! And after so many years of carefully planning film shoots and writing screenplays, there's something incredibly freeing about not having to plan quite so much. However...I do plan because it's the only way of achieving my goal of writing the best novel possible. So I am a pantzer who plans. I am, I freely admit, a plantzer.

Maybe that's why I love looking at a blank screen in the morning. I know some writers hate it, they feel it's intimidating, but to me that blank screen represents adventure. Its a mountain or valley or ocean that I haven't explored yet. There are unknown wonders lying on the other side. All I have to do is slap on my boots and put on my coat, and with my trusty map in hand, set out...

So until next time...I'm movin' on!