I'm learning -- maybe, it's all very confusing (but fun) -- where I fall on the Pantser-Plotter continuum. I'm reading Writing into the Dark by Dean Wesley Smith and found this passage:
And as I said, I wrote a lot of media tie-in books from outlines. My rule during those days was to write the outline, get it approved by Paramount or some other license holder, then never look at the outline and just write the book. My memory is so bad that after seven to ten months from the time I wrote the outline to the time I got the contract and wrote the book, I had no memory of the book I had outlined at all. None. And if the title hadn't been on the contract, I wouldn't have remembered that either. So I never looked at the outline. Never. I just typed in the title and wrote off into the dark. That kept the book fresh and alive for me. And no editor or license holder ever noticed the book was different from the outline they approved. Not once.
Funny. And, perhaps, indicative of how much of what happens in publishing houses is "because that's how we do it" rather than "because that's what works."
