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.
