I’ve finished the workbook!
Well, finished as much of it as I can. There’s a few exercises that I’ll need to come back to.
One says to take every scene in the book and choose one detail to heighten, which is something I’ll want to do after I’ve written the new scenes and re-arranged the ones I have.
Another had me write a pitch, and then follow-up by coming back to the pitch in a week and winnowing it down some more. That’ll obviously have to wait.
But I’m done with the bulk of the exercises. Now all I have to do is put them into practice.
So next week I’ll be combing through the workbook, pulling notes and scene ideas out and combining them with the notes I have from own first read-through.
There’s going to be a lot of changes, so I’ll need some way to keep track of them all. I think I’ll start by writing out a new outline, sketching out the scenes (new, changed, and existing) in order. That’ll give me something to compare to the novel as it exists now, a guide to what needs to change.
I might also work up a timeline, just to be sure everything’s in place, and maybe even a map of the setting, to fix everything in my mind.
Hopefully I can get all that done in a week, and then start on the edits the following week.
I have no idea how long those’ll take. This is my first time doing this – editing a novel top-to-bottom using more than just my own gut instincts – and I want to do it well, or at least as well as I’m capable of doing it.
If it takes me all year, that’s fine. So long as keep at it, and finish it.
