But here’s the word count anyway–29,336.
It occurred to me, I might talk a bit about how I organize my writing. Not that I’m an expert or even published yet, but heaven knows it’s taken me years of trial and error and “duh, why not do it this way?” to get where I am. Maybe I can help someone else get a head start on that, and they can get where they need to be faster because of it.
If you get published first, drop a mention of me to your editor, huh? 😉
So. When I work, I usually have at least four documents open. The first, of course, is my manuscript. You knew it had to be in there somewhere, right?
The second is my calendar. Not some fancy program that keeps track of how many heartbeats in thirty-seven hours or anything, just a document with a table on it, seven columns, start date in the right place, and as I write I pop over to it to type in brief descriptions of what happens each day. For instance, right now Rafe and Taro’s calendar is helping me keep track of the infection–and accurate symptoms of–in Taro’s badly tended injuries. It also reminds me that tomorrow is Taro’s birthday, an important fact he’s quite forgotten, in the fight to stay alive.
A calendar can also remind you to have night happen, if the day description gets too long. Sometimes the characters run off with a scene, and a writer might forget such important things.
Third would be my notes. At the top of this is my timeline of important dates I don’t want to build a calendar for, because it would be too huge. It is the relevant parts of my master timeline, for the whole milieu. I have been keeping the master for ten years, now. I don’t keep it open, lest I screw it up. And I have a master list of Ports of Call, to keep track of the planets in my galaxy, and who lives where and who would never go there.
The book timeline contains only the dates important to this book. (Pretty explanatory, I guess.) Relative birthdays, important anniversaries, such things. For plugging into the calendar if the book goes over a memorable date. I hadn’t realized this book would run over Taro’s birthday. I’d also forgotten that my Marine’s family would be two children bigger, by the time this story started. Kind of a major oops, when they show up the correct age in a later book, wouldn’t you say?
Below the timeline on the notes document, is an outline. Not a synopsis, not a “this is where they go next,” I can’t write like that. But I often get bits and pieces from farther up the book, or an important fact needing planting earlier, but I don’t want to go back and do it right now. Those go here. By putting it in outline style, I can move pieces up and down easily. My muse tends to jump all over the book, so it’s helpful to be able to order them. It’s also easy to see where one bit starts and another one ends.
Last is my used document. This is where the notes go once I’m done with them. I don’t always use them, or maybe I’ll use only half of one. And realize later that I’ve cut something I should have kept. So I cut and paste from notes to used, and everything is still there, if I need to check it later. But it’s not in the way, in notes. My notes file was twelve pages, yesterday, and I couldn’t find anything until I’d weeded.
It also keeps me from a worse blunder–like having Taro explain about his sister twice.
Before I start, I do character profiles, to learn my people, and a set of elements BJ gave me, to figure out the general shape of the book.
If I’m working and I run into a tough spot, I will often open a new document, copy and paste some stuff and go, just to feel free to type, edit, cut, fold, spindle and mutilate. It’s easy enough to import it once you’re satisfied, and hard as hell to fix the manuscript if you don’t move, and then change your mind.
The best advice out there, is to write what you like to read. Everyone knows that. But it’s also important to keep track as you go. You will be so sorry later, if you have to go searching through nine hundred manuscript pages to find out if you placed that scar on the left arm or the right, or maybe on the wrist–did you even say “scar?” Search won’t help, if you don’t remember if it was a scar or a mark or just an almost-invisible white line…