A Trip to Office Depot

I decided to re-write my novel.

Or at least the first chapter. I was using highlight on MS Word to highlight passages that I thought needed fixing or perhaps even deleting. When I saw most of the first chapter was highlighted and that I made more edits on my drafts on that one chapter than all my other chapters combined, well the decision became easier.

But first I wanted to get organized. I wanted to make an outline for the chapter, find a way to deal with the massive amounts of print outs I was accruing, and keep my notes and research together, so I bought a big binder and different dividers and sticky tabs and a million other things.

I am really organized now, and to be honest it was completely worth it.

I bought numbered tabs to represent the chapters, tabs I can write on for any additional materials, and some clear slips to hold my outlines so that I can find them easily and stay true to my outline.

I'll get into outlines (or rather how I came about mine) in the next post, but I really like them for keeping me on track.

For the first section I have a tab for my research. For this part I have four colored tabs (red, blue, yellow, green) that tell me by their color whether a page has notes, phrases, things I want to research further, or if something is essential to my story. The next part is for my general chapter and my detailed outlines. Each chapter and any drafts or revisions are also kept - the drafts being kept in one clear pouch to keep them together.

Writing the chapter with my outline has really helped keep me on track. I know where this chapter is going, what I want to accomplish and how I want to set the story into motion. The first chapter seems to be the hardest, the one with the most mistakes at least - having all my notes and everything I need at the ready has helped me with my dreaded Writer's Block.

Not to mention, I do so love to highlight things with a real marker.