I have the pleasure of working with a published author at my place of employment. I thus often pick her brain on topics related to writing and publishing. Recently, while talking about the contents of the new writing program I've developed, we discussed planning vs. writing by the seat of your pants, the latter often lovingly referred to as being a "pantser" by the writing community.
In our personal experiences, planning works much better for us. We both agreed that going in "blind" can be a recipe for disaster. In my case, starting to write without even the barest of outlines in place results in an incredibly fleshed-out first couple of pages, followed by directionless slop. Many of my earlier projects went down this dead-end road. We also agreed on the importance of giving yourself space to breathe while writing by allowing for changes and deviations wherever they feel natural.
When I wrote the first drafts of Book 1 in the Archivist's trilogy (back when the trilogy was a stand-alone), I had fragments of a plan plotted out. As a result, my story had some direction, but it was also riddled with plot holes that I did a poor job of patching up along the way. By the time I sat down to re-write Book 1, I had loosely plotted all three books in the series. This not only gave me a better sense of direction while writing but also greatly enhanced my ability to foreshadow and allude.
I'm really only a pantser on a small scale, mainly on the scene level. Excluding side-character diary entries and the like, I have to write my stories from beginning to end. I experience the scenes with my characters as I write them. This allows me to find a natural flow and to fill in details not covered in my outline. However, it also means that I can't bounce around and write different parts of the story at different times.
This begs the question, what type of writer are you: planner or pantser?
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