I'm a writer.
I'm also a teacher.
During the school year, that's not a great match. If I'm doing my job well, I have little left over energy for creativity, but if I only write on vacations, it's too easy to lose track of a story. My solution has been to promise myself to write at least 100 words every day on my story (the same story - no jumping around allowed).
I have been very good at keeping that vow, but it's left me with a very different problem.
See, the way I kept the vow was to write 100 words on whatever scene I thought of - or to write sort of a narrative outline to tell myself the story.
That's good because I wrote something every day.
It's bad because it left me with a huge mess!
A 529 page mess to be exact!
I've been reading a lot of blogs lately by people who are planners. Their dedication and planning style is starting to rub off on me. Since summer vacation is approaching, today I had the bright idea to plan out how I would finish this book.
Uh oh!!!!!
I very quickly felt overwhelmed by what lay ahead (see, planning is not my natural style!) so I decided to treat my notes and narrative outline like a rough draft. I'd print it out and read and take notes.
That's when things got scary.
See, in order to adapt to my busy life (and penchant for collecting electronic gadgets) I've been writing in Google Docs. Google Docs is great because I can access my work from anywhere and not worry about having to transfer files from iMac to iPad to school computer that uses only Word to laptop, etc.
Alas, what Google Docs is not great at is pagination (or at least not that I've discovered).
So when I printed out those files today - turns out I have a whopping 529 pages written!
So now what do I do? (Besides cry???)
The best I can figure at this point is to take my trusty red pen, post-its, a notebook, an endless supply of coffee and tea, and start reading and taking notes about what stays, what goes, what needs to be rearranged, what works, what almost works, etc.
Or I could trash it all and play with another book. *hmmmmm There's a shiny new idea hovering above my laptop screen...
Seriously, though, I'm begging for advice.
How do you organize your "notes" or your planning. I DO want to be a better-organized person in the future.
Sounds like a mess. Don't feel overwhelmed. First, are you passionate about this story? If so, dig in one page at a time. I'm a little organized, in that I am not a jumper. I write one chapter at a time. But a dear friend of mine writes all over the place, and she is just now trying to organize things. She just works on one chapter at a time, printing the relevant pages that she needs, then tears them apart.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Miranda.
ReplyDeleteI am passionate about the story and I do know the overall arc, it's just the scenes that are a mess. I'm thinking I need to do something really different for me and set up an outline and then as I read, assign the scenes I wrote to where they fit in the story.
I'm like this when I write - I know where it's going but not exactly how it's getting there. I have honestly tried to plot in advance but my brain just doesn't work that way!
529 pages but not done, right?
ReplyDeleteWhat about post-its and a science board? I have one I divided into sections--14, I think, one for each chapter. Then I wrote on post it notes what happened in those chapters. Easy to move around.
Good luck! Don't walk away now!!!
I use a mixture of WORD and Excel to plan my stories. Each scene gets a one line entry. Depending on the story, I use some hybrid of methods from The Snowflake Method, to a simple 'beat sheet' as described by Larry Brooks.
ReplyDeleteIt allows me the flexibility to change things on the fly before I put my count to something that might become that 529 page manuscript.
Hi MJ and pathunstrom,
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by to help. I think I'm going to try to do something like that line-by-line outline as I read through it. But maybe on the big board like MJ suggested.
I was going to suggest getting your outline and numbering the various points. Then go through the pages and number them as to where you think they go on the outline.
ReplyDeleteIf you can get them into chronological order, then you can work out if you've got the major things down, like main plot points, character arc and theme, and then just go through and make sure that all works.
After that, it's just nitty-gritty editing, which takes time, but isn't too bad if the story as a whole is sorted.
If you haven't done so already, you might want to make notes before you start about what you want the story to end up like, i.e. if you want it dark or light, what you think the theme is, what the characters are like and what their arcs should be.
The more detailed a map you can start off with, the easier it will be to see where you've deviated from it, which will mean the problems get sorted more quickly.
Thanks for taking the time to comment, Anne-Mhairi. You're all reinforcing what I figured I had to do. I'm really such a bad plotter. No matter how hard I try, I can't organize my brain around the details of a story before I've written it so I guess I'm stuck trying to clean up my messes.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually the first time I've ended up with something so unwieldy. I think it's because I sensed something was off in the story all along and I tried to write around it. Now that I've finally figured it out, I have to deal with the cleanup.
Thanks for the suggestions on how to do it. I think I'm going to have to be methodical about it and go through page by page as you all have suggested.
I do know the end though. That's already written. :)
Wow. That's a lot of work. First, be proud of what you've accomplished! Seriously, writing every day is a feat in itself. And that you're still passionate about this story tells me you're not ready to toss it. That's good. I'm not sure how you can organize this in an easy way, but page by page, highlighting what you LOVE might be a good idea.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise... have you tried any plotting tools? Storyboarding or the like? Or do those terrify your muse? lol. I'm more of a planner - a cross between a plotter and a pantser - but one plotting tool I love is called the W-Plot. Karen Docter gives a fantastic workshop on this method and it's great because it allows you to focus in on as much or as little detail up front as you're comfortable with. Check it out. I think her process can help. Good luck! And next time... maybe just use WORD. ;-)
I missed this before, but I was thinking Scrivener could really help you out here... ;-) And at least you have enough words that cuts won't hurt!
ReplyDeleteHi Gwen,
ReplyDeleteThanks. Yeah, I keep thinking I need to learn Scrivener. I almost signed up for your August class but I was scheduled for 2 weeks of jury duty starting August 1st so the timing didn't seem right.