If you spend enough time with fiction authors, you will eventually hear two terms: pantsers and plotters.

Pantsers prefer to write by the “seat of their pants.” They develop a great opening and then discover the story as they write. Pantsers get bored if they know where the whole story is going ahead of time.

By contrast, plotters like to carefully outline the story before they begin writing. They need to know where the story is going or they can’t start.

Both approaches can work for fiction. But plotting doesn’t work so well when it comes to your real-life journey as a writer.

The writing life is unpredictable. You don’t know where it is going. Every piece of writing you produce is a new opportunity to reach people. Not only that, but your skill grows every time you publish. When you combine all that with the constant changes in technology today, there is no way to predict where anything is going.

You can’t plot out your life. There’s no need to figure everything out ahead of time. Just do the work every day and enjoy the journey. If you knew the ending ahead of time, it wouldn’t be any fun, now would it?

Today’s Challenge: If someone could magically tell you how your own story ends, would you listen? Or would you rather it be a surprise?