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Transcript

You Can't Plot Out Your Life · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyWriterLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you spend enough time with fiction authors, you'll eventually hear them use two terms, panters and plotters.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: So what are these?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, panthers are people who prefer to write by the seat of their pants.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: They develop a great opening for their story and then they discover the story as they write.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And panthers get bored if they know where the whole story is going ahead of time, which is why they prefer to just have a great situation or a great opening and then just kind of let the story unfold from there.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, by contrast, plotters like to carefully outline the story before they start writing.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: They need to know where the story's going or they can't really start.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, both of those approaches can work for fiction, but plotting doesn't work so well when it comes to your real life journey as a writer.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now the truth is that the writing life is unpredictable.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: You don't really know where it's going.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Every piece of writing you produce is a new opportunity to reach people.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And not only that, your skill grows every time that you publish.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: When you combine all that with the constant changes in technology today, there's no way to predict where anything is really going long term.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the reality is that you can't plot out your life.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's no need to figure everything out ahead of time.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just do the work every day and enjoy the journey.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you knew the ending ahead of time, it wouldn't be any fun now, would it?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Here's today's challenge.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody could magically tell you how your own story ends, would you listen or would you rather it be a surprise?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: A big thanks to today's sponsor, the Writers Talk App.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you've always wanted to write a book but don't know how to get started, you'll love the Writers Talk app.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: When you join, you get immediate access to hundreds of instructional videos, a tool to help you come up with more ideas, and best of all, a community where you can collaborate with other authors.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Writers Talk is only$4.99 a month, and you can check it out by going to writerstalk.app.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's writerstalk.app.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.