When you sit down to Do Some Writing, are you someone who takes a handful of ideas and smears them around the page like cake batter, or do you have your itemised step-plan of scenes, pulses, beats, plot points and snippets? Do you know what you're going to write before it appears on the page, or is every moment a journey of joyful (or frustrating) discovery of (sometimes not-so) wonderful prose?

Planning can reduce a lot of your faffing-about time. It gives you structure and pacing, you can see what needs to happen where, and detect things that aren't working, or plot holes that really can't be handwaved, before you've hidden them behind prose. It gives a clear sense of purpose to your writing: "Today, I'm going to write the scene where Suzie snaps and steals all the neighbours' left shoes" which can be a godsend for the busy writer - knowing what you're going to write before you sit down to write it automatically cuts half of your reasons for procrastination, and often half the cause. 

It can, however, lock you into a less-than-best story. Part of the joy of writing is the serendipitous solutions, the connections and convergences that present themselves as we write. "Oh, and because none of Suzie's neighbours have any left shoes, the police work out that the Evil Dr Caper must be one of her neighbours". A lot of brilliant ideas just won't occur as you're planning, because you're thinking too big-picture-ly. Your mind isn't looking at the little details that can connect and sprout into entirely different storylines.

Some people just aren't planners, either. They need the details, the little picture. They need to write the thing, and then figure out what it was about. The thought of the empty, unfilled story spirals into gargantuan proportions in their mind, paralysing their words, and if they write a plan, it's either vague to the point of irrelevance, or colour-by-numbers cliche-points.

But that's okay - these people usually do well by winging it. They sit down, and the blank, unprepared page is absolute freedom. Words are poured onto the page, shaped and formed and the tiny-detail connections link themselves into story, sometimes without bothering to tell the writer.

Play-based writing obviously has its own issues. Consistency can be difficult, and often when you've finished a story, you've actually finished five potential-stories, and it'll take a good many rewrites before you have just one story there and easy to follow.

How do you know what works best for you? Same as always - trial and error. You'll probably find that one or other technique, or your own idiosyncratic combination, works best, or it may even be different solutions for different formats, genres or even stories.

Personally, I sit on the fence a little. I can't write a story I've planned - or rather, I can't write it to that plan. Planning my story will cheerfully send it careening off into the wilderness. But sitting down with no idea of what I'll write at all is a recipe for losing several hours to Plants vs Zombies, or perhaps Left for Dead 2. I try to give myself a rough idea of where the story's going, and some thoughts as to how it might get there. Before I write, I work out what I'm going to write - as I work on several stories at once, I can shorthand it to 'the next scene of Shadowren' or '1000 more words of [short story]'. I keep copious notes to myself as I write, and I always make sure that when I finish writing, I note what's going to happen next. That way, I'm not restricted to a plan (I have, on numerous occasions, sat down, read that reminder, and thought "What a load of pants. This is how it's going to happen.") but I don't have that "I don't know what to write!" excuse to, well, not.