If you read part 1 of this series, ‘The Origin of Dear Dory’, you’ll know what happened to convince me to start writing. Now I want to talk about my process once I’d made the decision to turn Dear Dory into a book.

You may have come across the writing terms ‘plotter’ and ‘pantser’. They’re mainly used to refer to fiction writing – they describe how writers like to tackle their books. It’s not uncommon for one writer to ask another: ‘Are you a plotter or a pantser?’

Plotters outline the entire plot (or at least the broad brushstrokes) before sitting down to write. They already know the ending when they write ‘Chapter One’ in their manuscript.

Pantsers find their way as they go. They begin chapter one with absolutely no idea of what decisions their characters will make, or how the ending will turn out.

So, what was I: a plotter or a pantser? I was neither. Actually, I was both, but I was more of a pantser than a plotter.

Let me explain.

I quickly imposed on myself a writing rule with Dear Dory, and that was to write something every day of the pregnancy. It didn’t matter what it was, as long as it somehow related to the events of the pregnancy.

Some days the journal entries would be a record of things that had happened, such as a midwife appointment, or my partner having one of her not unusual – or unfunny – episodes of pregnancy road rage. At other times, I would sit at my desk and think about what type of parent I was going to be and perhaps recall episodes from my childhood, and ruminate on those experiences. It didn’t matter, as long as it all related back to the pregnancy.

And that was me very much writing like a pantser. Except I wasn’t a pantser, not in the true sense of the word. I had an insurance policy that meant I would, structurally speaking, never go wrong. Can you guess what that was? It was the story of pregnancy.

Think about it: pregnancy fits the perfect story structure.

First, you have what is referred to in screenwriting terms as the ‘inciting incident’, something that happens to the main character to send them on a journey in pursuit of a goal that, if realised at the end of a dramatic climax, ultimately changes the character forever.

My inciting incident was the pregnancy test. Following that, there were plenty of scenes and subplots sprinkled throughout the ensuing months. And if you’ve not experienced this yourself, take it from me that watching your partner go through labour and then meeting your baby for the first time is one hell of a dramatic way to end a story. It was perfect. Pregnancy is split into three phases, or three trimesters, which I saw as a three-act structure for a story: beginning, middle and end.

Even though I would wake up each day not having a clue what I’d be writing about, I knew from the nature of writing about pregnancy that the natural conclusion to my story would be the most epic and dramatic scene of the entire book.

And it was – oh boy, it was!

So, if someone says you can only be a plotter or a pantser, tell them from me that in some instances you can be both – kind of.