either way is fine

A good friend of mine and former college roommate came to visit this weekend. Jynx didn't know what to make of my friend being here.

Jynx would be purring. My friend would let Jynx sniff him before petting the cat. The cat would then claw and bite my friend's hand. Then the cat would be fine and back to purring once my friend withdrew his hand. My friend would see this as a sign to try again, but would get the same results. Jynx's bipolar disorder was working overtime.

I am very structured when it comes to how I write. I've got outlines for novels and I tend to come up with complete ideas for short stories before beginning to write them. This helps me a lot.

From time to time, I will forgo my outline or just start writing a story with no idea how it was going to end. These pieces end up feeling very organic as I write them. They also end up being some of my better pieces.

The down side to this unstructured writing is that I end up editing them over and over. The structured stuff ends up being done with just minor edits.

Which way is the better? Does it really matter? The more editing I do means more time. It also means that I'm writing more stuff that isn't in the final version. But in the end, either way sees a complete piece. That makes either way enjoyable to me.

Despite Jynx fighting my friend, he still got attention. Wouldn't it have been more enjoyable to not fight the attention being offered? Maybe, but it doesn't really matter to him and is bipolarness. Either way he got what he wanted like I get what I want out of my writing. So, really there is no right or wrong way to go.