I am not an extensive planner when I write. Ironically, in real life I am a conscientious planner. So when I first began to write seriously, and attended some lectures and conferences, I thought that I must be the type of writer that planned the whole book down to the last detail because that was the type of person I was. After one lecture, I gathered a deck of 3x5 cards and wrote chapter numbers on each card and then wrote scenes on separate cards for each chapter. It was a disaster! It was so artificial and boxed me into a writing cell of sorts. Thankfully, I realized pretty quickly that this was not a method that was for me ( though it is for many writers ) and threw the cards away. This liberated me to write with creative abandon and it was amazing to witness the story pour itself onto the page. I was often surprised and excited by how events developed, since I didn't know beforehand how things would work out. This is described in the writing world as being a 'pantzer