Planning or pantsing...which works best?

Good morning all!

Today one of my goals is to sit down and actually begin solid writing work on my new book of office stories.  (By the way...go vote for a title for this book here.)  It's the first time that I can recall that I first planned out a book and then sat down and wrote it.

Must debate is made...some of it right here...about what works best when it comes to writing.  I know writers who spend long laborious hours with character backstories, story boards, outlines, the whole thing.  By the time they're ready to sit down and write, they have presentation material that would make any business CEO sweaty in the naughty places.  (Okay, sorry, but I just had a vision of some big CEO guy getting all juiced up because of a stack of story boards.  LOL)

As for me...well, I just don't have that kind of time.  I write the way I make friends.  Things develop as I go along.  Sure, I have to go backwards often and adjust things about the character or in the plot because I've decided to take a different route further down the line.  The best example of that is while I as writing Dream in Color.  I had an idea where the book was going.  My main characters had other ideas. 

Which is better, which saves time?  Both and neither, I believe.  For those who plan...time is chewed up in the planning stages.  The actual writing, I'm told, is a breeze.  But it's the planning that takes all the time.  For those of us who write by the seat of our pants, a lot of time is taken up "fixing" things behind us that we've changed ahead.  My new novel, Lies in Chance, took me nearly 30 years to write...and I can't blame all of that on my real life.  That book should have, could have been done long ago...had I had a clear idea of where these characters were going.   (By the way...word on the street is that this book is better than my first.  Those are some of the early reviews I'm getting from friends who've read it.  I'm just sayin'!)

The end result of either method, however, is the same:  a completed writing project.  So does it matter how we write?  I don't think so...so long as we actually WRITE.

So today I'm starting work on a book that I've actually plotted out.  It's a weird feeling, knowing how this is all going to go.  In my head I'm hoping I'll be done writing it later this morning.  In reality, however, I've given myself until mid December to get this out into e-book land.  And then I'll continue my fun seat of my pants ways.

Meanwhile, pantser or planner, go forth and WRITE!