Discovery Writing as Meditation
Once upon a time, I wanted to be a writer. I spent years — decades, really — starting to write and then stopping as swiftly as I started. If I started to write without a plan, I got lost after a few pages. If I made a plan, I never reached the end of my plans, so my plan lay unfinished and unused like a half-buried treasure map. My words went nowhere and my attempts at being a writer faded into my library of dreams and sat unloved, waiting for me to rescue my dream at some distant point in the future. I couldn’t trust myself to write without a plan and writing a plan was a dusty road to nowhere. Discovery writing taught me to have confidence in myself and my writing and delivered me to the sunny shores of finishing and I started.
What Is A Discovery Writer, And Why Does It Matter?
First, let’s clarify a little terminology. A pantser is a writer who eschews most or all of the planning some writers put into their writing. Isn’t eschewing a good writer’s word? Pansters are the improvisational musicians and action painters of the writing world. This definition is usually defined in opposition to the word plotter, which is a writer who plans and outlines the details of their book including plot and character. I call this discovery writing. I can’t take credit for inventing the term, but sadly I can’t remember from whom I learned it. Thank you to that wise and mysterious person, and if anyone knows where the term originated, please let me know.
No Discovery Means No Writing
I can’t say it any simpler than being a discovery writer is the only approach that allows me to write. After decades of struggling, in three years of discovery writing have written two complete books, I am in the middle of writing a third, and have several solid ideas for the books that come next. theorizing three years later. Progress! Success!
So, rather than just talk about being a pantser discovery writer, I want to discuss the roads that being a discovery writer have opened for me.
Discovery Writing Meets Mediation
In meditation practice, we learn to let go. Thoughts come and go and we watch them flow like leaves in the autumn wind. The moment we grasp or repel those wind-blown thoughts we cease to meditate and instead we are chasing. My meditation practice has taught me that for me, any writing practice that does not let my words go in the same way is chasing and not writing. Plots, characters, concepts, and themes arrive if I let hem and disappear the moment I chase after them or reject them like a jilted suitor. Discovery writing is my meditation practice in a story form factor.
For me, discovery writing is both the method by which I write and the self-help tool that allows me to write. For me, discovery writing is not just an approach to novel writing, though it certainly is that. It is also path to deeper creativity and a meditative path unto itself. Meditation and writing feed and inspire each other. Our intuitive minds help our reactive minds.
The lack of rules — beyond trying to tell an engaging, entertaining, and meaningful story — allows me to see the story and its connections. It allows me to delve into the river of imagination and sail with it until I’ve arrived at my plot and characters. Not having a map allows me to have map. Having a formal map means being lost forever.
What About Structure?
Even for a discovery writer, structure matters. While I start my novels with an outline, it is somewhat rudimentary, and I don’t let it get in the way of my writing. I consider myself a pantser because when I am writing I like to get carried away in my ever-developing discovery of my characters and where they want to go. I know the guideposts I want them to reach on their way to their eventual plot or character arc destinations, but I don’t want to plan out too much in advance.
As I’ve mentioned, If I plan a plot, I will plan it for the rest of this life and my subsequent incarnations. This is true for developing my characters, too. I discover who they are through writing about their interactions, what happens to them, and how they react to my other characters.
That said, there’s a something even more important to me about discovery writing. Something that makes more of a mission than an approach.
Postscript
This draft was originally going to be something different, but as I began to edit this piece, realized I needed to move away from my plan and right something different. That’s discovery writing in action. There are countless articles about how to write and how to employ different writing methods. I don’t need to add to that chorus of wise and helpful voices. Instead, I decided it’s much better to explore why I am a discovery writer and how it relates to meditation, why it’s important to me, and what it means for a mindful writing practice.