It's been a while since I shared my progress on my novel! I finished my draft in August and took some time off before revising. And to be honest, when you do a thing for two years and you finish the thing, it kind of messes with you and so I had to spend some time sorting myself out. As an aspiring author, you're goal is to finish the story. It's different for everyone but the message is to don't give up. But when you finish, it's like, now what? 🤷🏽♀️ . I had to spend some time rethinking what I wanted for my story and how I could fix it. It's not easy because when you finish a draft (that took two years to write), it's hard accepting that there's still a lot of work to do. . Once I came to terms with the fact that I needed to revise (because a part of your brain wants to be done with the thing), I took out a new notebook (because any reason to use a new notebook is the bee's knees) and did a brain dump of all the things I wanted for this story. I spent some time hemming and hawing at the audacity of my demands (if I were the drinking type, copious amounts would have been consumed) and when I decided it was time to get down to business (read: talk myself down from the very high ledge I put my self on), I began to systematically break down my wishlist for this book into actionable tasks. . Basically, I Hermioned the hell out of what needed to be done. . I printed index cards summaries of each chapter (compliments of Scrivener's index card feature), then I created an index/list in my notebook with each chapter, noting the Acts and Climax points in the story and now I'm book mapping my story--a developmental editing strategy to show where themes and other details show up in the story for consistency and pacing. . If your eyes are crossing at this point, it all means I'm kicking ass on this revision. . I'm actually excited for October (and not just because it's my birthday month and Halloween 😜), but the light at the tunnel does not seem so far away now. I'm setting a goal to be done with revisions by the end of this month! . Anyone else get excited about doing things that involve notebooks and lists? 🤓 . #jennfswrites #writerswhobookstagram #pinaywriter
