I’m currently about 16.000 words into NaNoWriMo. I’m a bit behind, but with the way my story is going, and how I’m picking up the pace with my writing, I think I can catch up within a day or two.
That’s a nice breakthrough, but not the reason why I write this blog post.
I’m a discovery writer, and I used to make long lists of notes while writing, along the line of: in the chapter where x meets y, add that x is very obnoxious. Stuff like that in pages and pages of notes, even if I try and incorporate them half way through, made edits unbelievably hard.
As I take time between writing and editing, I had no idea where to put what or even if it’s truly relevant to the story now the first draft is finished.
Then I had a breakthrough. I was writing in Ulysses this week, and typed a long description of a chapter I was skipping because I need some research for that first.
I looked at the way the chapter looks in the sidebar, and knew that this description was enough for me to continue the story. I also thought how helpful it would be to add descriptions to every scene I wrote so far. I immediately went back into my novel and started to enter what the chapter is about as a chapter title.
Later on today, I will look at the notes I have taken so far, and will probably spent another 20 minute round to add them either in between the chapters, or I can put them in my scenes for somewhere folder, something I talk about here.
So now when I know I need to add something in another chapter, I can just scroll up and take my notes in between the chapters where I think they belong.
I can already tell that this will make my editing process so much easier. It already does, because adding those scene ideas and the little notes to myself along the way, is definitely part of the process for me.
I'm so thankful for my brainwave. I will report on it in depth when I start editing this novel (probably in February or March next year).
