Discovery or Fill-in-the-Blanks?

I've been writing on an average of 1,600 words a day, which is double the goal I set for myself. I'm pretty pleased. If you remember, the novel had come along at such a sluggish pace that I doubted myself almost immediately.

I have very little self-doubt with this book. I'm pretty sure I'm going to finish it, and finish it well.

That's not to say that the current words I'm writing don't suck. Oh, they do. A lot of it is telling myself what to write instead of actually writing, but I like this way better-- I'm smoothing out the plot and the scenes before actually getting into them and writing them. I'm creating a structure. And once I'm done with the structure, I'll be able to start filling it in.

A non-fiction technique, that is. But I'm used to working like that, I suppose, and it seems to be working.

Maybe, I'm beginning to think, the last two efforts haven't really worked out because I'm not a panster. I need to know what my story is-- what exactly the scenes and the characters are before I get in and start writing.

For me, writing isn't a discovery. I see it as filling in the gaps, the missing pieces.

So far, it seems to be working.