Card by Card

So here it is, my whole novel, laid out scene by scene.

Don’t bother trying to enlarge the image to steal all my fabulous, mind-blowing ideas. Even if we lived on the Starship Enterprise, where simply saying the word “enhance” would make it all come into focus, you could never read my handwriting.

So why am I teasing you?

I just think the process of writing is cool. Or rather, the byproducts of the process of writing are visually interesting.

It’s the same reason I took a picture of all the drafts that came back to me with feedback this summer.

The thing you can’t see is how long this took. This simple arrangement of cards took hours and hours to produce. I pulled out 11 cards, moved some up, others down. I adjusted chapter breaks and shortened flashbacks.

Then, after all that work, I made a list of notes about what I wanted to changed, took a picture and scrapped the whole thing (because really, in a house with a 5 year old and a 2 year old, it wasn’t going to last long anyway).

The good news is, none of the changes are too crazy. Most were about pacing and rhythm. I don’t think I’ll have to do too much redrafting.

So I’m going to work on those big changes, and then I’ll go through one more time to really fine tune the prose.

We’re getting close here, people.