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Depressed, Anxious, Angry, Delighted…
I’ve always been a pantser.
If you’re a writer, then you know what I’m talking about.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a pantser is a writer who doesn’t do any actual planning for a story, at least that is my definition of the term. When inspiration for a new story hits, we pantsers jot down the story as it plays out in our minds. My approach to writing fits in with my approach to life in general, which is to take on things as they come.
When an idea for a personal essay pops into my head I sit down at whatever desk is available to write the story. I don’t need to be stationed in front of my home computer to write, as most of what I write happens when I’m sitting in front of my work desktop computer. I wrote the entire first draft of a book on teaching elementary students by setting aside thirty minutes of my allotted lunch period to write anywhere from two-hundred to three-hundred words. That’s about two-hundred sixty hours of my life devoted to finishing my book, likely a solid months-worth of writing for other professionals in the game.
And I’m not one of those writers who can produce an entire two thousand word piece in one setting, because I usually don’t have that much of the story in my head before I sit down to write. I write until I get to the point of the story where the…
