Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Storyist, a 2021 NaNo sponsor, is a novel-writing environment for macOS and iOS that helps you track your plot, characters, and settings, and keeps all of your writing organized and accessible. Today, Storyist founder Steve Shepard is here to help you decide what to do with your Camp project after you complete it:
The end of Camp is always a little bittersweet. Over the last month, you’ve lived the high highs and the low lows with your characters in a world you’ve created. Now, whether you’ve “won” or not, the end is in sight, and it dawns on you that you’ll spend less time with those characters in that world. Well... darn. Camp was amazing. What’s next?
The second draft, of course!
But not right away.
Put your manuscript in the drawer for a month. Take some time to handle those chores you’ve artfully avoided during Camp and reconnect with the people around you. And be sure to reward yourself for making it this far.
Then, when you’re rested and ready, read your manuscript from start to finish in as few sittings as possible. The goal for this read is to experience your novel as a reader would. Don’t beat yourself up about the quality of the prose. You gave yourself permission to write quickly during Camp to make progress, remember?
With that high-level view of your novel fresh in your mind, make some brief notes. What stood out? What’s your sense of the story? Are there any major changes you’ll need to make? How is the pacing? Some people find it helpful to write the jacket blurb at this point (or rewrite it if you wrote one at the start of Camp).
Next, re-read the manuscript chapter by chapter. This is a deep read. Go slowly and check your facts along the way. Identify the inconsistencies and loose ends. Mark the purple prose for revision or elimination. Consider printing out a one-sided, double-spaced copy of your manuscript and putting it in a binder. This will give you a manuscript page on the left for markup and a blank page on the right for notes.
Armed with a fresh sense of your story and a stack of notes, you’re ready to start the second draft. As with the first draft, this will be a significant creative effort, but this time, you’ll ask your internal editor to join you instead of locking them in the closet.
As with the first draft, there aren’t any hard and fast rules on how to proceed, but here are some tips to help:
Make rewriting a daily habit. Because revision involves adding and deleting words, you’ll need a metric other than word count to measure your progress. “Chapters edited” is about the right level of granularity.
Create a mockup of your book to put in your writing area for emotional fuel. This could be as simple as a hand-drawn dust jacket wrapped around another book. If you’re feeling ambitious, you could use a print-on-demand service like Amazon KDP or Blurb to print a sample paperback. Storyist has some tools to help you create the PDF.
Share your revised chapters with others and ask for feedback. The folks in your cabin are good candidates. Or find a writers group in your area.
Good luck! And remember, the rewrites (plural) will be hard work, but they will be worth it.
And congrats on your excellent work at Camp!
Steve Shepard is the developer of Storyist and an avid NaNoWriMo participant. A night and weekend writer for many years, he took some time off in 2002 to finish a novel. Not finding the writing tools he wanted, he decided to create them.
A Mugger in Florida Picked the Wrong Senior to Mess With.......
A Mugger in Florida Picked the Wrong Senior to Mess With…….
Intended Victim Is A Kickboxing Champion
A Florida mugger picked the wrong senior citizen to attack.
The Palm Beach Post reports 68-year-old Steve Shepherd was limping to his car last week, a pulled muscle impairing his stride, when a mugger hit him in the head with a bottle and demanded his cellphone.
Bad choice.
Shepherd is a five-time world kickboxing champ. Though retired 18 years, he’s been…
He also doesn't look like Chris Evans at all. I am very bad at making ManShep's.
Anyway his back story is Colonist (in keeping with Cap's whole losing his parents at a young age thing), War Hero (because come on). He's a Soldier, but Barrier is his bonus because it was the closest to his shield I could think of. He didn't romance anyone while fighting Saren and he saved Kaidan because Kaidan is his Bucky. He's the most Paragon person in the galaxy.
