After a two-week break, once I finished draft zero, I’m back to writing this week. I spent the break resting my brain and then getting feedback from my two early beta readers. They were incredibly encouraging and helpful and we were able to talk through some things I couldn’t figure out about my subplots and character family dynamics. I have a plan, so I’m diving in once more.
On this revision, I’ve decided to go through scene by scene and retype. This helps me polish the language of the zero draft and lets me find natural opportunities to update plot points and character arcs. I have some scenes that will need more work (and a list of new scenes that aren’t there just yet), but a lot of my notes are minor tweaks that need to happen throughout so it’s easier to stay close to each scene and make changes as I go.
There’s no right way to do this, but I retyped my last story too in 2019 when it went from zero draft to first draft stage and I found it similarly helpful. It’s not something I would do every draft, though. For one, it’s time-consuming. I’d like to get this revision done in the next 4-6 weeks. Off to a good start these last two evenings, I’ve got about ~5,700 revised words so far, but admittedly there’s less to change in the early scenes of the manuscript. We’ll see how it goes!
I’m off the cadence, so I only have two sentences to share from yesterday and today. Back to the full week of last sentences next week:
- 8/2: AJ elbows me an “I told you so”, but Coach starts to talk before I can retaliate.
- 8/3: I watch her pour yesterday’s cold coffee from the pot into a mug and pop it in the microwave.
With Love,
Natalie