Random acts of kindness vs. instinct

Today when I was running errands in the neighborhood, I drove by a woman standing on the side of the street. She had a cane although she was not elderly, and I assumed she was waiting for me to pass before crossing in the middle of a block. It was a gorgeous day--what happened to that rain we were promised?--and I had the top down. She lifted her hand, and I waved back. Only as I passed did I hear her say something like, "Excuse me?" or "Please." I did not stop, and then my conscience beat me up. Yet there was something just enough off that I didn't want to stop. I knew if she asked for a ride, I didn't want to let her in my car.
We're told constantly to listen to our instincts, and I believe it--but that warning conflicts with the idea of random acts of kindess. And I'd been the recipient of random acts of kindness the day before.So how do we know what to do?
A few minutes laters, as I drove by a TCU parking lot, a student shot out into the middle of the street before he looked either way--I stopped and waved him on, which he never acknowledged with a smile or a wave. My stopping was definitely instinct and not an act of kindness, but there was no sense honking angrily and bullying my way through even though I was in the right. There's the middle ground, I guess.
I once read a book, or started it, on the important or value of fear. Many mystery writers tout this book as a great source. I read a bit and gave it up, but the basic point was that fear is a great self-preservation instinct. If it feels wrong, it probably is wrong. (Oh, how I long to turn that into a comment on politics, but I'll refrain.) I think it's a valid point, but then again we don't want to live our lives in fear nor, heaven forbid, pass that on to our children and grandchildren. I do have a lot of fears like heights and deep water and so on, although not as many as my grandmother, but still I've worked hard at not foisting them off on my children.And the result is that they're a fairly fearless bunch. But I think they too feel the instinct of self-preservation.
Countering that is what we hear in church or elsewhere about being our brother's keeper, looking after our neighbor, thinking of others. That's the kind of person I want to be.
So what wouldy you have done? Would you have backed up to see what the lady with the cane wanted? Would you, as I have, spend much of the day worrying about her? Or would you dismiss it and decide your instincts were right.
Fortunately my day took a much more positive turn with the arrival of Jacob. We went out to dinner with "Aunt Betty" and had a good time. A friend at the next table talked with Jacob and then said to me, "I guess we have no issues with sociability." I laughed and agreed. And Jacob said to me, "This has been a fun day." Makes the whole day worthwhile.

Are you an outliner or a pantser?

I was explaining to one of my memoir classes the other day about fiction writers being either outliners or pantsers. Outliners have thorough outlines before they ever hit a key on the keyboard; pantsers write by the seat of their pants. I have heard some outliners talk about elaborate charts with post-its so they can move incidents about, detailed lists of physical and emotional traits of characters, a solid knowledge of what will happen in each scene. The trick seems to be to write in terms of scenes, not chapters. That I can understand because I get carried away writing sometimes and forgt to break it up into chapters! But the advantages of this method are clear--the author knows the novel backward and forward before even beginning to write.
It's not that I begin without any outline--I have some rough notes on where the project is going, a general idea of who the victim or victims are, and a vague notion of the killer--sometimes I'm half way through a novel before I decide which of the possible suspects did the evil deed. But what I like about pantsing is that new incidents, scenes and complications occur to me as I write. One thought leads to another--if that characters said that, then maybe this could happen . . . and so it goes. Sometimes it's like I'm not writing it myself but someone is dictating. I've heard more than one successful authors say, "Listen to your characters and they will tell you the story." The biggest proponent of that theory was Elmer Kelton, and he had great success with his methods--albeit backed up by extensive historical research.
When I told my class I was a pantser, a good friend remarked that she was surprised because I tend to be organized, sometimes too much so, about everything from cooking and entertaining to planning my day's schedule.
But I got to thinking about the difference. Melinda, TCU Press production manager, and I used to talk endlessly about right-brain and left-brain. She knows she is left-brained--logical, thinks sequentially, rational, analytical, objective, looks at parts and can put them together. Thus she is wonderful about figuring out computer problems, grasping the overall business picture of an organization, figuring out what the structure of a problem is. She thinks of details that I used to flit right by.
On the other hand, even as director of the press, I tended to act on instinct. Organized, yes--my desk was always clear at the end of the day, queries and phone calls and emails answered, whatever came in taken care of. But throughout my life I've done everything from buying a house to buying a car impulsively. And I acted on impulse or instinct at  the press--a sense of what would sell and what wouldn't, an instinct about what kind of event would work, a subjective sense about things. I used to tell my former boss that God didn't mean me to read spreadsheets, and one day he countered with "Oh yes she did!" Sure, I can read them and grasp what they tell me, but I still followed my instinct. Did I make mistakes? You bet, but I also had some pretty good instincts that brought us some fine books. Melinda never trusted me to proofread--"You're right-brained," she'd say. "You don't have the mind for details." Actually I'm not that bad at proofreading.
Does being a pantser stand me in good stead as an author? Hard to tell at this point--so many of the novels I've written in the past were history, so the "plot" was laid out for me, as it were. But I've written two mysteries I like (and a few others I'm not sure about) and I found that instinct did lead me, telling me where we'll go next. Only publication--coming soon for one--and reader reaction will tell if my method is successful.
So what about you? Right-brained or left? Outliner or pantser. It doesn't just apply to writing folks--it has to do with all life.