Starting

The hardest part of a project is starting, especially when you don't know what you're doing.

I wrote over four hundred thousand words over some of the worst years of my life. I did this by hand, for a couple of reasons, and then I spent over a year transcribing them into digital files. It isn't that I'm so very slow, but stuff happened. Lots of it.

After transcription was review and commenting, and I finished that in June. I took off the entire summer--not just because I had other things I needed to do--but because I dread the next part: figuring out what to do with all of the comments. Mind you, this comes before editing, because the kinds of notes I made to myself might affect some of the story.

As so often happens, I picked it up yesterday because I was tired of worrying about it and not doing it. So I opened the first installment, created a new document I ended up calling comments, and started figuring out what I need to do.

I can tell you my "process"--I created headings called "Dictionary", "To Dos", "Story Bible", and "Characters"--but unless your overall process is close to mine, it might not help you. What might--I mean, you know, maybe--is that I had to bring a bit of bravery to it. First I needed to admit that I didn't know what I was doing, then I needed to make myself comfortable that there was no right way to do it. Then, scariest of all, I needed to give myself permission to create my own system--and make changes as necessary as I go. WHOA.

But...of course. This is how we do it when we're adults. There is no "right" way, and people who insist there is are 1) either trying to sell you something, 2) have already bought something, literally or figuratively, and need to justify their purchase, or 3) they're inflexible. Well, bless them all, but feel free to do your own thing.

Deb in the City