Oh wow! We weren't taught anything about plotting. It was assumed you just sat down and it came to you. Admittedly this was a long time ago, and I think that the teaching of Language and Literature has improved since my day, but it's rather typical that both of us got the wrong advice, despite both of us being opposites, plotting wise.

Admittedly, I do try to do the full complex plot with the timelines and the character sheets and so on, and then I come to a point where I think "oh damn it, I'm just going to start." But I think of the plotting I did before that point as a building up of steam - it gives me thrust, rather than squashing me flat.