How a "Planner" Became a "Pantser"

There's an event that happens around the world in November called NaNoWriMo.  To quote their description on Google, "NaNoWriMo is an annual (November) novel writing project that brings together professional and amateur writers from all over the world."  I've participated in Nano (as I'm going to call it for short) a few times in the past, as well as some of their smaller Camp NaNoWriMo events that they hold in April and July.  I have only completed my goal of 50,000 words once and that was in November 2013 (which Facebook kindly reminded me today with my "WINNER" picture I took).  All of my other attempts at fallen pitifully short of my goal, but that's okay - and I'm okay with it.  The point is that I tried, and I did my best to enjoy my writing while I was writing it.

Now you might be saying, "Hey, Shada," (which is my nickname, if you've forgotten).  "What's this writing business?  This doesn't have to do with Star Wars or Disney.  Isn't that what you said this blog was about?"

And I would say to you, "Now, you hold on to your horses just a gosh dern minute there, whippersnapper."  (My Nano novel that I "won" with as a western of sorts; I'm sorry.)  "You give me some time here, and I'm gonna learn you at thing or two about a'plannin' and a'pantsin'."

That just...sounds weird.  I am so sorry.  Moving on.


The terms "planner" and "pantser" are things that I learned about in the Nano writing community.  There were some people who carefully spent the month of October (or earlier) planning out their novel piece by piece.  Writing up character sheets.  Gathering research and information.  They were the "planner" group.  Then you have the people who sat down on November 1st with a blank slate.  Maybe a rough idea of where they wanted to go.  No solid leads or characters.  These are the people who are writing by the "seat of their pants" - the "pantser" group.

There are parts of me that have always been a planner.  I loved my little schedule/planner in high school that they gave us for free every year.  I'd get my different color pens out and color coordinate everything so I knew what was homework, what was personal, what was extracurricular.  When our Star Wars Celebration group prepares to go to a convention, I like to have group discussions, make hand-outs, discuss plan of attack and what we'd like to see.  I like to know what will be there when I'm going to a certain place.  I don't need to know exactly where I'm going to be at 2:15pm, but I like to know the things that are available to me, what times they're open, and what my "must dos" are.  And I like to have some things very planned - flight times, pick-up times, dinner dates and times, etc.  Things like that need planning.  You can't just show up at the airport and go, "Hello, sir, put me on an airplane.  I want to go to Florida."  That doesn't work.  I haven't tried it, but I'm assuming it doesn't work.

While I have usually considered myself a planner in my lifetime, I also know that I have a bit of a pantser in me, as well.  This goes back to the idea of I don't know where exactly I'm going to be at 2:15pm.  I hate hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute schedules.  I hate to feel like I've tied myself into a work-day schedule when I'm really just trying to have a weekend off or a vacation day.  That drives me batty and makes me more stressed because what happens if I don't obey my schedule?  What happens if I fail?  See?  Not fun for me.  When it comes to Nano, I'm also a "pantser".  Characters and writing need to flow.  If I force myself into the research element of it without really having purpose or care behind it, then I'll just feel stressed and bored and I won't want to write anymore.  Not really a productive attitude when you have 50,000 words to write.  

These two paragraphs only describe me and my style of writing and vacations and life.  Not everyone is the same, and that's okay!  It makes life uber-interesting when we're not all carbon-copy cookie-cutouts of each other.  We are not the Emperor's Clone Army!  (Which, really, is a bad example because even the clones prove that they aren't carbon-copies of each other despite having the same genetic structure...but I digress.)

What I'm really trying to say here is that my planner lifestyle has had to make a huge shift into the pantser lifestyle just because life (and myself) made it that way.  I learned that I can't be rigid in my plans and still expect myself to roll with the punches.  If there's an issue with one way of doing things, I can't keep doing things that way and not change to something else so I can get a different outcome.  I encountered a lot of crap over the years that bucked up against my planning abilities and threw me totally out of whack, so I finally learned to just say, "Fine.  You win.  We're wingin' this one."  And I learned that that's okay.  You can be a planner and a pantser, and there's nothing wrong with either of them.  

For me, a bit of both suits me just fine, and that's the attitude I'm trying to take toward my planning of our next Walt Disney World trip in December.  We've been dealing with so much this year - from personal illness, to family illness, to sudden losses and death, to depression and anxiety, to just living the day-to-day.  I didn't plan any of that, and if I'd clung so desperately to a personal plan during all of this craziness, I think I'd be a lot more insane than I currently am.  I had to let it go - all of it.  I could do what I could do only in that moment I could do it, and that was okay.  

I'm keeping that in mind as I'm looking at all of this Christmassy stuff at Disney and reading blogs and gathering information.  Some of it makes me really nervous because it's the typical things we hear when we read about Disney.  All of the websites tell me to plan - I need a plan.  I need to know which park I'm going to go to on which days.  I need to make advances dining reservations.  I don't have any FastPasses.  I don't have a Dining Plan, but it says I should have a Dining Plan.  I can't eat that much.  Omg.  What if we don't make it to blah?  What if we can't walk it?  What if we're sick?  What if it rains? 

I hate all of that.  All of it.  I understand that having a Disney vacation means you have to plan, yes.  But I personally believe in not making myself physically ill while planning the gosh dern thing (there's that old Nano novel coming back around again).  So when I've been doing my reading and researching, what I've been attempting to do is just make a list.  Make a list in my head of things I'd like to see, where they are, when they're available.  I have quite the list thanks to lots of different websites, including Disney Tourist Blog.  I found their articles to be quite helpful, including the self-tour of all of the decorations at the Disney resorts.  This was a big thing on the Nerd Husband's and my list, so it was helpful to find a bit of a guide to get us where we wanted to be.

Also, to allow us a bit more freedom in our time schedule and exploration, we decided to rent ourselves a car for this trip.  We have a lot of things we'd like to go outside of the Disney parks, and it can sometimes be rather trying to resort hop using Disney transportation.  So we chalked up the extra bit of money (which isn't bad, really), and we're going to test this out to see how we like having our own vehicle while on property.  I'm kind of excited to get to drive down there again; it's been a while.

Sitting back and reading all of this again, it sounds a little rambly - but the point I'm trying to make is that maybe you can take a step back from the uber-planning.  Even if you just take one day and leave it completely open, maybe that would help.  Just a day to say, "Hey, where do you want to go?  Let's go play."  Because really, that's what it's about, right?  Playing and creating memories with your family and friends and loved ones.  At least that's what it's always been about for me, and I need to remember that.  That should always come first when I sit down and come up with a plan by the seat of my pants.

"Boo to You" - Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party

Almost a month to the day, I'm posting my blog about attending Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party.  Don't judge, dude.  It's hard to write blogs when you're busy.  You end up making outlines, writing them in chunks, getting sidetracked and learning html when you don't really have to, etc.  You know how it goes.  So let's move on...

 Perhaps the smartest thing we did in preparation for the Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party was take it easy that day.  The Nerd Husband wasn't feeling quite up to par that morning, and I was pretty tired, as well.  We slept in for a long while, and then we hopped a bus to Epcot to get some lunch at the Food and Wine Festival booths.  Altogether, we were in the park about an hour and a half.  We knew that rain was coming anyway, so we headed on back to the hotel to just chill out and relax.  That turned into fall asleep watching TV for three hours while listening to the rain pound on the ground outside - so relaxing, actually.  We eventually woke up around 6:00 or so, quickly got ready, and then head out to the Magic Kingdom with no idea what to expect.

I will preface this by saying we had no agenda for our party except to take advantage of the special offerings for the evening - parades, shows, fireworks, trick-or-treating, and one trip on the Haunted Mansion.  We didn't want to ride any other rides or visit any characters, so that limited our focus for the evening which was fine for us.  Therefore, our schedule wouldn't work for everyone, but it certainly worked for us.

We walked up to the Magic Kingdom and went through security only to be placed in sort of a "holding" tank in front of the entrance.  They were holding back the party folks until the rest of the park was empty, which was fine.  There was enough room that I didn't feel overly crowded or anything, and the people leaving the park were amused by our costumes.  Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps were quite the hit, but Nick just took the cake, I think.  A couple of little girls went by with their dad and they pointed and squeed as they walked by.  I laughed a bit, but I really had to laugh when the dad came back to us, pushing against the crowd with his stroller.

"They wanted to say hi to Nick Wilde," the dad explained with a grin.  I giggled as two little girls waved up at NH and carried on with their excited chatter as NH waved back.  It was too freakin' adorable.  After they left, we chatted it up with the family of three next to us, and then finally the line started moving forward.  We received a wrist band from a cast member tasked with standing at the front of this mass of moving people (thank you to that person and their patience), and then we were off to the races!

Walking onto Main Street was pretty amazing - with the pumpkin decorations lit up and the characters our and the general atmosphere of fall and Halloween.  I had to admit that I was pretty lost, though - which is such a weird feeling when you've been in a place thousands of times and yet you have no idea where to begin.  We walked forward just a bit, not actually hitting the main part of Main Street, when I saw that a gate that is typically closed was wide open off to my right.  What's this? I thought.  I've got to ask someone where to go.  I'm totally lost.

I found a cast member standing right there, and I actually admitted, "I've never been to this before.  I'm lost.  Where do I begin?"

She very nicely started to tell me about the park, and I laughed a little and said I'm sorry.  "No no.  I've been here, but never to the party.  What's off this way?"  I pointed to the newly opened door which usually hides the "backstage" area.

"Oh, that's where you can start off your Trick or Treating!  If you go that way, they'll give you the bags that you can use as you explore the rest of the park."  Lady, you just said magical words to a 33-year-old adult who still longs for those awesome moments of kid-dom where you just dress up in a costume, say some words with a smile, and people give you candy.  For free.  Because they have to.

So NH and I headed into the backstage area, which felt kind of awesome and forbidden and off-limits because I've never seen this part of the park before.  There was a little courtyard with statues of all of the main Disney characters dressed in Halloween costumes.  There were quite a few PhotoPass photographers, so we took advantage of the shortest line we could find in front of Jester Goofy.  They had us do a magic shot, and I wasn't at all certain what we'd end up with.  It ended up being one of my favorite pictures of the whole night.

Seriously.  Epic love for this picture.

We got our Trick or Treat bags (which - I'll admit - felt a little silly but also kind of satisfying), and we headed out of the little area where it dumped us back out at the very end of Main Street.

Now, here is where we were rebels, people.  We completely went against every website, blog, and article we had read about MNSSHP.  And you know what?  It didn't hurt us one bit.  Not one little tiny bit.

We figured that the crowd wasn't too big there on Main Street near the castle.  And there was a nice little spot near a fence line on the Tomorrowland side of the street.  So we parked ourselves and waited for the first Mickey's "Boo-to-You" Halloween Parade.  All of the things we read said this wasn't the way to go - watch the second parade, they said.  It would be much less crowded.  But hey, we were here and we were now, so why the heck not?

The parade was awesome.  Freaking awesome.  The floats and costumes and characters were all amazing, and I love getting to see the villains really shine.  This was a huge highlight for me, and I felt like a little kid watching the ghost dancers twirl in their Haunted Mansion ballgowns.  And the ghost butlers with their little shovels dancing and dragging them on the ground.  So much fun.

After the parade, we figured - hey, we're kind of comfy here, and you know what?  The Hocus Pocus Villain Spectacular is going to happen right over there.  Sure, we're not close enough to see facial expressions, but I've got a good look at the castle stage.  You good?  I'm good.

So we stayed and rebelled against the internet once again.  This show was a lot of fun, with great characterization and a chance to see of many of the characters that we normally don't get to see!  I loved seeing Rapunzel and Flynn and the entire Viking hoard.  And Tiana, Naveen, and Louis from The Princess and the Frog were a lot of fun.  Plus, as much as I am not a Nightmare Before Christmas fan, I have got to admit that Oogie Boogie is one of the best costumes I have ever seen dance around like a crazy person ghoul on stage.  This show was a ton of fun, and I'm glad we took the time to enjoy it.

From there, we decided to head out and just look at things, finding trick-or-treat stops along the way and just enjoying the costumes, the people, and the atmosphere.  The one thing on NH's list of "eats" was a pumpkin spice cupcake from Gaston's Tavern, so we headed on back there for a late dinner.  We weren't horribly hungry that day, so we actually opted for some snack items from Gaston's which suited us perfectly.  I would definitely get these things again without hesitation.  We had some apple slices and caramel and some hummas and pretzel chips.  Which left a perfectly pleasant spot in our stomachs for that cupcake...which was amazing.  So worth it.

We hit a few more trick-or-treat stops as we made our way around the park, through Fantasyland and into Liberty Square.  It was getting close to Celebrate the Magic and Happy Hallowishes fireworks time, so I headed us back up toward the castle.  We found a little spot tucked close to the Christmas Shop there in Liberty Square where they typically draw portraits.  I figured we might be blocked by some trees or something, but that never bothers me much for fireworks.

Celebrate the Magic was perfect from where we were standing.  As long as you can see the castle, you're pretty well set for that show.  When Happy Hallowishes first started, though, my heart sank a little.  While I could definitely see fireworks, they were hidden more by the building's roof that stood directly in front of me.  The lower fireworks were hard to view, and we could have benefited from a different vantage point...

...and then the fireworks went off all around me.  All the freaking way around.  I had never seen anything like that before.  I saw fireworks from back in Liberty Square and maybe even back to Frontierland, and then it curved in an arc behind the castle and all the way over to the edges of Tomorrowland.  It might have even stretched in a complete circle; I have no idea.  But it was amazing, and I grinned like an idiot.  I was okay with my spot from then on out.  Plus, the soundtrack was fun.  So, so much fun.

I'm honestly trying to remember where we went after the fireworks, but I can't quite recall.  I think we were just having fun, laughing, enjoying the evening.  We stopped at a few photopass photographers, got some pictures, got more candy, looked in some shops at special merchandise, made some selections to pick up later, and finally - somewhere in the evening - we ended up in front of Space Mountain where I saw a 5 minute wait time.

Now, I haven't been on Space Mountain in years.  The last time I rode the thing I might have been 14.  So we're talking...almost 20 years.  I figured, now is the best time to ride it as an adult - just to see if it's worth doing in the future.  The NH wasn't feeling up to giving this mystery ride a shot, so I said, "I'll do this alone.  5 minutes.  It won't take long."  The 5 minute wait honestly might have been how long it took me to walk through the queue because when I got to the loading area, there were maybe 15 people ahead of me.  I walked right onto the ride.

Once it started, I wanted to walk promptly off of it.  I was folded into a little car that I honestly don't know how I bent my knees far enough to fit in it with a little safety bar thing that rested between my legs.  Then I was plunged into darkness, jerked this way and that way without any warning, trying to steel my body for the coming right turn only to be forced left.  I grunted and groaned like an old person.  The bar between my legs thunked against my skin, threatening to leave bruises.  I got off that ride more messed up in the head than when I walk off Star Tours.

I learned that night that I am too old for Space Mountain.

When I walked up to NH, I said simply, "Never again."  We moved on to get more candy and make our way to the other side of the park.  The night was drawing to a close, and we had one more thing on our list: the Haunted Mansion.

We were the only ones moving through the queue when we got there.  It felt so odd to be so alone, and there was no one to greet us when we got to the double doors.  The doors creaked open, and we were then welcomed by a cast member - all normal stuff.  But the make-up job on this cast member and the creepiness factor was definitely kicked up a notch.  Chalk it up to the Halloween party, it being close to closing time, or anything you want...but she was perfect.  Her make-up had a very zombie/ghostly feel, and it was definitely on-point.

We actually ended up in a group of maybe 6 other people, so 8 of us kindly stepped into the dead center of the stretching room.  There was no turning back now...  She even pulled the joke that I'd been hoping to see - standing behind a guest and staring at them when the lights go down in the stretching room.  And when the lights come back up...instant screams.  It was brilliant.

When the doors from the stretching room opened into the indoor cue, we walked out and saw the little "exit" doorway in front of us.  Typical, right.  But what wasn't typical was the four cast members who had strewn themselves in various places in the doorway.  One was stretched out on the floor, her feet slightly propped up, her head hanging limp as a the dead, staring at us.  A couple more languidly settled against the door frame, while a fourth hung in the back, chin down, staring.  Unmoving.  All of them.  Again, brilliant.  Someone needs to do this all the time.

The ride was fun - just super fun realizing we were there celebrating Halloween.  It didn't matter that we could quote the thing line for line by now.  What mattered was being together, having a celebration, and having fun with all of it.  We walked out of the Haunted Mansion chatting about the cast members and how cool they'd been, and then we saw the PhotoPass people.  This was the one I knew we needed.  I knew what this one was, but I wasn't sure exactly how they framed it.

We stood in line for a while but it wasn't too long of a wait, and it was amusing to see what was going on.  They would put the group of people in front of the horseless carriage, and they'd have them smile.  Then another cast member would run over to the side, hold up a wood ghost on a stick (very unscary ghost, I might add), and say, "Now look at the ghost!  Be scared!"  Seriously, it was done so hilariously that I never thought it would look as awesome as it did.

It was our turn.  We did our thing.  We looked ridiculous, I was sure.  But when we got the picture...

Okay, we still look ridiculous (I mean, for goodness sake, look at the ears), but how freaking awesome is that?!

After our fright of the night, we took off back toward Main Street.  We did a little shopping and picked up a few things, and then we headed out for the night.  Despite the fact that we'd napped earlier in the day, I think we fell asleep pretty soon after getting back to our hotel.  It was such a fun night.  I loved everything about it, and I'd love to go back someday.

This new experience is going on the list as a "win" for me.  I'll definitely be back for more not-so-scary frights...and candy.  Because...well, candy.