I straight-up lied to my editor about this

My dirty little secret (and word-for-word pitch for THE HERD)

I’m a pantser.

No, not the kind who runs around pulling down people’s trousers. Writers divide themselves into two types: plotters, who put together an outline before they write the first word, and pantsters (as in, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants), who just start writing and have no idea where the hell the story will take them.

One of four books I have no idea how I’ve written

Like most divides, this one is mostly a false dichotomy, a way to make us seem further apart than we really are; every author needs to figure out the shape their plot will take, and the only difference between plotters and pantsers is when they sort that out. Outliners do it by outlining; chaos monsters [raises hand] do it by writing the first draft. I, in fact, call my very earliest version “draft zero” or a “discovery draft” (the gross version is “vomit draft,” as in, barfing the story onto the page)—because it’s like a fleshy outline that I then tweak and move and rewrite and Frankenstein into an actual bona fide ~first draft~.

Anyway, as a pantser, I kinda freaked out when I learned I’d have to formally pitch my sophomore book before actually writing it. (Spoiler: I figured it out and am sharing the full pitch below.) Many authors (plotters, all) accomplish this step by submitting a fairly detailed multi-page synopsis. But how the hell am I supposed to know what’ll happen? I wanted to scream. I won’t figure out the ending until I’m deep into the draft! Luckily, I quickly stumbled upon a very important truth: