On Monday morning I had 96 index cards laid out in Scrivener, a super-marked-up Word document with thousands of comment bubbles…and a blank document.
On Friday morning, the Scrivener file looks pretty much the same, with a few minor tweaks. All the comment bubbles are still intact. The third item, the once-blank document, has undergone the most change by far.
20,351 words into the rewrite makes me very happy for the end of the first week of work. The first half dozen scenes are all new; subsequent ones are tweaked, reworked, or–in some cases–deleted. I’ve gone back and forth within the building document every day, finetuning earlier bits as I continue to add words.
In a couple of instances I noticed that the same information was revealed more than once, or that two conversations were too similar. Which was stronger? Which timing worked better? Make the change. So what occurs in the other instance, then? Did the elimination leave an interchange too weak? Is there other information that can be shifted here?
Oh, yes. Move or delete one thing, and everything around it turns to jelly. It’s great fun getting it all solid again. Yes, that was sarcasm.
But not completely. Because some of these pieces are snicking together with a near audible click. And that, my friend, is a really good feeling.
