Trust Your Subconscious

When people ask about outlining v. “pantsing,” I think a lot of the time what they are actually asking about is whether or not as a writer you have to trust your subconscious. My answer: At some point, you do. And the more you do, the better your stories will be.

This doesn’t mean that I think that it’s bad to outline. Writers work in lots of different ways to unlock their subconscious, creative minds. I don’t care what way you work. But the problem is that I see too many writers who think that “planning” out a book means following a bunch of rules that someone has written in a book somewhere and that you just use a formula and you have a bestseller. That isn’t the way that it works.

A lot of incredible books come out of someone who is a new writer, trying new things, unafraid not to use formulas and rules. Which isn’t to say all the good books are that way. A lot of the best books come from writers who are experienced in the trade.

But all of the best books come from people who know how to trust the subconscious.

When I sit down to write, I try to give myself a framework for what I’m going to do that day. I write a few sentences about the next few chapters. I often write the first line of the next chapter before I leave my computer the day before, so I know where to start. But here’s the thing: I never really know what’s going to happen next. When I think I do, I am almost always wrong. And even when I’m right, it never happens the way that I think it will. And that’s the way it should be.

Writing should be surprising, and I believe it should surprise the creator as much as it does the audience. When you sit down, you have to trust that something other than your limited conscious mind is in charge of this immense project. If you don’t believe that, I don’t see how you can keep working. There are too many other things that are more concretely successful, that you will control more. Why write?

Writers learn in time that your subconscious plants clues for you, like the villain in a detective story. Sometimes when you are stuck in a book, all you need to do is go back and read the clues and you know where you go next, what the ending is. And of course, you have to see all the crap that got put in there by your conscious mind and carefully weed it out.

Every novel I’ve ever written, I wrote by sitting down each day and letting myself do what I didn’t know how to do. And that’s what I know about being a writer. You don’t know anything, and you embrace it. You stop trying to push away the fear, and you greet it like an old friend. You again? Ah, well, we will work together.