Who--or What--Are You? And Do You Re-Read Books/

We seem to be fascinated these days with classifying people--and heaven knows, there are any number of ways to classify them. Here are the classes into which I clearly fit: senior citizen, woman, liberal, Protestant. Therein if you're into statistics, you can tell a lot about me from how I'll vote in November to how I feel about Rush Limbaugh--don't ask.
But there are other, less clearly defined ways of looking at people, and some of them are amusing. There's been some buzz on the internet lately about introverts and extroverts--my daughter-in-law wrote about that on Raggedy Madness and announced she's an introvert though capable of being as social as the next one when the situation calls for it. I've read several pieces about this inborn disposition and have decided I'm an ambivert--dead square in the middle. My favorite place to be, admittedly, is at my desk in a quiet, empty house, probably with a dog asleep at my feet (ah, I'm in heaven right now for that's the situation). But give me, say, a week of evenings alone at my desk, and I am irritable, bored, lonely, cross--name a negative and I'll claim it. I love to have my house full of people, my favorites being of course my children and grandchildren. But there are a lot of friends I like to have come join me for supper, a visit, whatever. Fill my house with people--or take me whirling off to parties and dinner with friends and meetings--for five days, and I long for the solitude of my house and my office and the undemanding company of my dogs. I'm not happy for any length of time as an introvert or an extrovert, so I clearly define myself as an ambivert.
Yet another classification has come to my attention in the last couple of days. I've talked here before about authors who are plotters (everything carefully plotted out before they write that first sentence) and pantsers (those who write that first sentence, and let the muse loose to see where it will carry them). Now someone on a mystery listerv has raised the question of whether or not pantsers ever re-read books or watch a movie twice. I'm not sure I see the exact correlation but apparently the thought was that if you're a free enough spirit to be a pantser, you must be bored with planning and knowing ahead and you won't want to read a book twice. The theory is getting shot down because lots who consider themselves pantsers write about the books they read annually, or those they love to go back to occasionally. I've got to admit not only to being a pantser but to almost never re-reading a book. Nothing makes me more distressed than to come home from the bookstore (or download from Kindle now) in anticipation of an evening of cozy reading only to find after five pages I've already read the thing. One of the wonders of the Kindle program--and probably other digital programs--is that you can preview twenty pages of a book. If you don't know by then if you've read it, you might just as well give up and read it again.
What about you? Do you re-read books? Think it makes you an ambivert? 

Writing as discovery

I've talked about pantsers vs. plotters before, but essentially pantsers write by the seat of their pants. They don't plot--they just plunge in and see where it goes. I'm a pantser and, as I wrote recently, that habit often leaves me adrift in the broken middle of a manuscript. But the other day I confidently told Fred, my beta reader, that I had been writing the "climactic" scene of my work-in-progress. Of course when I got back to it, I found that just summarizing the remainder of the events was not going to do at all. I hadn't really finished writing the book. I had at least a chapter and an epilogue to go.So yesterday, I wrote over 2500 words--I didn't really keep count--and I burned myself out on it. This morning, as I lay in bed contemplating getting up and starting the day (I do that a lot) I realized that I had to milk that final action scene--there were a lot of details I hadn't accounted for and some things that could heighten the suspense and also add to the emotion, even the humor. But I'm not ready to go back to that work yet. I think that's a good sign--it's percolating on the back burner in my brain.
Meantime, I started reading a novel I'd written after Skeleton in a Dead Space. I wasn't getting much encouragement with Skeleton, and I felt the need to be writing something. When Turquoise Morning Press enthusiastically accepted Skeleton, I put the new work aside, polished the one they contracted for, and went back to the sequel I'd also started. The new work languished, and in my mind it became more amateurish, the protagonist more of a Pollyanna. The more I was distanced from it, the less enthusiastic I became.
Well, last night I started re-reading that work, and you know what? I kind of like it? I see a lot of work to be done on it, mostly cutting which is a problem because it's already on the short side. But I'm making notes and correcting small things as I go along. But Kate isn't a Pollyanna--she's a singlel woman in her thirties with a background. I can't judge about amateurish--who can judge their own work? But I'm kind of hooked on reading it. I intended it to be a culinary mystery, but I'll sure have to beef up that aspect and, yes, I think I'll add recipes. That thought makes me miss my dear friend Reva, for she could tell me how to cook turnip greens and poke sallet and chicken-fried steak and the other delicacies that they servce in a small-town East Texas cafe. After all, I'm not sure Paula Deen could make  decent chicken-fried steak!
Of course, there's that old question: is it better to continue a series or take off in a new direction? I'll worry about that tomorrow!

The Broken Middle

There's been a lot of talk on one of the Sisters in Cime listservs about plotters and pantsers. Plotters outline books carefully, in detail, before they begin to write. Some have elaborate wall charts, with sticky notes that can be moved to show a scene belongs here, not there. Some even use computer programs tailored for that purpose. When I first started writing fiction for young adults, I always knew I'd have twelve chapters, so I'd number from one to twelve on a legal pad and jot down what happened in each chapter--just a brief note. I remember once driving somewhere with a friend and working on such an outline. When she said, "In Chapter whatever, such and such can happen," I said, "Hush, Joyce, it's my book."
These days I'm a pantser. I write by the seat of my pants. I have a general idea and a few notes of what's going to happen and how it's going to end, but I have no idea how I'm going to get from the beginning to that end that's in my mind--and may change by the time I get there. My general technique is to get that first line or two on the computer screen and see what happens. Often I go through that process each time I sit down to write--worry about what to say next, type a line or two, and I'm off, usually surprising myself at the directions things take. It's an instinct thing--and it can lead to problems.
It took me five years or more and many rewrites to get Skeleton in a Dead Space to the point that it was publishable; I maybe worked on the sequel, No Neighborhood for Old Women, for two years. Late last month I wrote the first chapter of the third, untitled book and then set it aside partly because I didn't know what to do next and partly because I had other things to do and no idea when--or if--the publisher wanted this third book.
But then, wham! There came a schedule. No Neighborhood for Old Women is under contract, in the hands of the editor, and will be out in April. And the third, untitled book is due in final form at the editor March 15, to be publishedin August. I began to write like a madwoman until one day it occurred to me I was so obsessed with word count that I wasn't paying attention to where the story was goiing.  So, not quite dead center--30,000 words into what should be about a 70,000-word novel--I am stuck.
My solution: something I usually do much earlier in the process and that is reread what I've got. This time I didn't take time and I may regret it, but now I'm rereading--slowly and carefully.
I did get a boost last night from dinner with a friend who is a historic preservationist. Since my protagonist is a realtor who specializes in rennovating historic properties, she needs to be knowledgeable about what you can and cannot do with such buildings, and my friend Carol gave me valuable information that will help me along.
But like so many writers, I'm feel the novel is broken in the middle. And this week I haven't had a full day at home to work on it. Wish me luck, please.