Writing, writing, writing

I have a habit of speeding up as I get toward the end of a book I’m writing. I’m just so ready to be done so I can go back and fix all of the little things throughout the book that are bothering me. So I start trying to rush things and I have to remind myself to slow down.

That’s what I was doing last night. I know I’m near the end of my rewrite of Book 2, but I’m not quite there yet. I still have a few chapters to go and I found myself wanting to jump ahead in the story so I could get everything wrapped up. But no, Shana. Take your time. You’ll be at the end soon enough.

The rewrite has gone really well though. I call it a rewrite, but it’s really almost an entirely new story because so much has changed. But it’s better. At least, I think it’s better so I hope other people think it’s better too. I started work on it on January 16, so tomorrow will be three weeks. Just a few more chapters and it’ll be ready for me to fix all of the little problems that I’ve already made notes on.

When I was younger, I used to make elaborate notebooks for each of my projects. All kinds of tabs for major characters, minor characters, plot, setting, goals, outline, etc. I don’t even remember what all the tabs were for. I’d gotten the idea from the writing books I read. (I used to save up my money and then get my mom to order books from the Writer’s Digest Book Club for me. I had a big collection of them until a few months ago, when I got rid of all but the few that I actually do refer back to every now and then.) But I noticed that I’d end up spending more time working on my notebooks than on writing the actual story.

As I got older, I stopped doing the tabbed notebooks and just kept a black and white composition book as my project book that I made notes in without keeping them in any certain order. But the composition book wasn’t working for Book 2. It’s too complex, too many characters to keep track of, and too many research notes that I need to look back on often. So I had to go back to the tabbed notebook, although I don’t have as many tabs as I used to: Major Characters, Minor Characters, Setting, Plot, Research. That’s it. And it’s working MUCH better. I keep the notebook next to me while I’m writing and now I know exactly where to look for the information I need.

There’s still a lot of work to do on this story, but I’m happy so far. I’m looking forward to the time when I can reveal full details about it on my blog!