Am I A Pantser?

 Something made me decide to listen to Brandon Sanderson's lecture series on YouTube. I don't know why, but I thought that I'm sure there was something I could learn from him by listening to what he had to say. I didn't get twenty minutes in before I had a profound moment. He said something that shocked me out of my seat almost shaking me to my core. And with one simple statement he may have explained my long malaise. He was explaining the difference between planners and pantsers. For the uninitiated, a planner is a writer that plans everything they write, famously called architects by George RR Martin, and pantsers are writers that write "by the seat of their pants" with no plan, GRRM calls them gardeners and he alongside Stephen King are the two most famous pantsers out there. I always considered myself planner until now. 

During his explanation, he said, "For a lot of gardeners, if you have an outline, and you work a lot on your outline, what happens is your brain feels like you've already written the story."

Holy crap, that hit hard. 

I began to wonder if that's been my problem. The last three projects I've had , I wrote relatively detailed narrative-style outlines for them and I struggled with all of them. I think that deep down inside I was thinking exactly what Sanderson had said. I started to wonder, "Am I a Panster?" The very thought made me shudder. It can't be. It's impossible. 

If I am a pantser, I'm more a cargo pantser!

All of my books have been outlined, no matter how vague said outlines might have been, there was always a plan in place, detailing the shape and direction of the story with full permission to deviate from said plan as I see fit. I've always had a beginning and some vague notion of the end. But now I'm beginning to wonder if I am a planner or am I actually a pantser? Is this why I've been failing lately starting and finishing new projects? I don't know what they answer is, but Sanderson's words definitely have left a mark on me. It's made me question my entire method of writing, even if just for a few moments. 

What does this all mean? I'm not sure. I don't actually think that I'm a pantser. I need a plan to write. Maybe I'm something of a hybrid that is actually a planner with pantser tendencies. Whatever I am, I need to figure out this malaise and finish something. I mean, I'm a writer for crying out loud.