Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
Before I spend the rest of the day in gratitude and spending time with my family, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who reads this blog, follows my journey, or believes in me. Writing always feels like a solo endeavor, but I don't think I could ever push on and continue the good fight without everyone's support and encouragement. So thank you.
Now, onto this week in writing:
M8-Outline
Last week I took a break from M7 to outline M8, and I'm happy to say that I've completed the outline and am 100% happy with it. I'm so excited to draft this story up in January. It'll be a great way to start off writing in 2018, and I get to fall back into a world I've desperately missed. I finished it up last Thursday before heading out to a wine event, which was awesome because it gave me more cause to celebrate.
M7-Read-Through & Revision Planning
Like I mentioned, I set aside Saturday and Sunday to flash read ATLWTO even though I was traveling. Because I was traveling, I couldn't have a pen and notebook with me at all times to jot down my thoughts, but I didn't want to waste time either. Travel days encompass so much time wasted anyway, so I really wanted to make the most of it. I made it my goal to read quickly and throughly so I could see how all my elements were working as a whole. To accomplish this, I ended up downloading my MS onto my kindle app so I could read on the go. For notes, I kept it brief and big picture, and typed it quickly in my notes app.
Some of my thoughts while reading:
- OMG, this beginning is terrible, should I change it again?
- Okay, this part isn't too bad. I can expand on this part. There's something there.
- With this character, there's a lot of pain here. Gonna exploit that, but hopefully she doesn't over power my MC.
- Ow. Okay. Getting a little teary-eyed. Next time I read this through, I want to be balling snot-tears. I could have done more.
- There's some hope at the end, I need a better resolution. I need to draw these things out a bit more.
These of course differ from my actual writing notes in my app, but the thing for me to see here is there are some good parts and bad, and a whole lot that I can to to improve it. This is a GOOD thing. I've had some read-throughs where I know it's so terrible or it lacks something for me, so I end up tossing the whole manuscript.
I finished the read-through in about 3-4 hours which is fantastic. I read a third before bed, woke up at 4 a.m. to hit the airport, read as I shuffled through TSA, and then finished on the flight. So if you're ever traveling and wondering if you have time to work on your MS, it's totally doable.
By Monday, I had many, many thoughts percolating before sitting down and writing up a revision plan.
I'm a list person, so I basically jotted things from macro to micro that needed to be fixed as a whole, and then organized them into a list. Tuesday, I went to my favorite coffee shop back home and typed out my revision notes and went through my outline scene by scene to see what needed to be fixed until I had a plan that focused on plot and character arc for my first pass. Though the list seems overwhelming, I'm excited to shape this story more and more, and see where six more weeks of revision can bring this.
