Remember my writing project…? The one I haven’t blogged about in a while…
Well, I’m back at it in full force. It’s turned into a sort of craft project complete with scissors and tape because I was struggling to really “see” everything I had.
I essentially have two versions of my story that I am now trying to marry in to one (better) version.
In doing that, I have made myself a color-coded To-Do list (in Excel):
- Physically cut and tape the two versions into one long strip of paper.
- Make sure my thoughts, concerns, feelings, fears are included.
- Complete a rough edit of taped together strip of paper.
- Make sure setting is included – and contributes to the story.
- Review notes from beta readers and incorporate suggestions.
- Flip through my piles of notecards to make sure all of the details I have deemed important are included in the story.
- Type up a clean copy of my taped together long strip of paper.
- Check my dialogue tags. (I have some commas where there should be periods.)
- This is embarrassing, but I need to make sure I have always used the correct version of lay, lie, laid…. I struggle with that.
- Note word count for each chapter and hope and pray that I have a book-length manuscript when I’m all done. (And, hope that my chapters are at least a little balanced…)
My story is made up of 26 chapters – so I need to do all of that 26 times. As I complete a “task”, I highlight the corresponding Excel box in yellow – so my goal is to have a yellow spreadsheet… by the end of February…?
Time to get back to work.