WWPR: Detailed notes are your best friend.

Last week I mentioned being sick which completely threw off my productivity. In hindsight, I guess I kind of deserved it. I stopped working out during Thanksgiving week and wasn't eating as healthy as I normally do. Combine that with the fact that I've been pretty stressed at work (Q4 is the busiest time ever), and how I've been pushing myself to revise as much as I can,  my body was susceptible to catching something--especially while traveling.

Fighting a nasty cold, my body was telling me to stop and rest. That everything would have to wait. That I needed to check out for awhile and relax. So I did. I slept and binged on Alias Grace on Netflix (so good btw!). By the weekend, I felt well enough to go to wine country for a preplanned trip with some friends. Then by Tuesday afternoon I started feeling more human so I slowly transitioned back to my normal schedule.

But when I sat down to do my revisions, I had a huge problem: my revision notes weren't very detailed. They were general notes I'd written about what needed to be changed in the MS, but not how to do it.

I cursed my past self for reading my MS on the plane ride without taking detailed notes (note to self: don't ever do that again). SIGH.

So this week I focused on doing another reading--take 2! This time writing detailed notes about every little thing wrong with it so that I could come up with solutions (aka a micro-game plan to complement the macro notes I had from the first read-through).

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No one likes doing anything twice, so this time I made it my intent to be thorough. I printed out the MS, gathered my pens, highlighters, index cards, and planner so that I could catch every little problem.

I read the MS again in two days and ended up with 5 pages of handwritten notes and all of my chapters outlined in notecards. It felt so good to finally have detailed notes on what wasn't working. Now, I can focus on finding the solutions and making a clear cut revision plan.

Tune in next week to see how I do just that!