I want to share some interesting things I’ve learned over the past five months of full-time writing, but I wasn’t sure where to start. I’m in the middle of the second draft of my first novel, and have figured some things out, not the least of which is that I have much more to figure out.
So I decided to apply one of the things I learned about writing a first draft: just write. A lot of folks gave the same advice: when writing a first draft, don’t overthink, just put pen to paper (or fingers on keys). Don’t stop to edit, don’t worry about continuity, grammar, punctuation or anything else that stops you from writing. Just write.
So I’m doing that here. I’m just going to start in the middle, with what I’m currently doing, and see where it takes me.
Several weeks ago, I asked a few beta readers to give me feedback on the first fifteen chapters of my book (I’ll go into beta readers in another post). I didn’t let anyone, and I mean anyone, read my first draft, but I didn’t want to wait until I had an entire second draft before getting feedback.
The manuscript I sent was half-letter (5.5×8.5) spiral bound, with a letter in the front and some questions in the back. I know this isn’t what an editor would want, but I guessed it would be what an actual reader might want.
Author aside: the weeks between sending the manuscript and getting feedback were torture. I’m sure the feeling’s common, but I had a knot in my stomach the whole time.
My readers didn’t disappoint. The quality of comments was outstanding, beyond anything I hoped. I’m still waiting for a few of my readers, but I have no doubt their insight will be invaluable too.
One of the significant questions was how to process the feedback. The comments covered the spectrum of possible changes, from small grammatical errors, to giant plot problems requiring giant rewrite.
I broke these into categories, and made a bunch of tasks. Some of the tasks had a lot of sub-points, like Reword, or Misspelled. I strung sticky notes together to get work in a single category in a single place. Others were lone, difficult, time consuming tasks with one sticky note that represented a lot of effort.
Then up on the wall they went, into big columns that represented the structure of my book. I started with a column for Acts I & II combined (in orange), and a column for Act III (in blue). During my edit/response phase, I sat down in my workspace, pulled a sticky or two off the wall, and did the work.
As I edited my way through the tasks, I realized I needed to tackle some of the work in Act I separately from Act II, so I broke up my workflow even further. It turns out it’s pretty easy to move sticky notes around on a wall.
You can see the leftover orange I moved from Act I to Act II, along with the new work for Act II (in yellow). The notes at the very top are weekly goals, and global tasks (like buy thank you cards for my beta readers).
Some of you might recognize this workflow. It’s a heavily modified version of Kanban, a workflow organization framework used in lean manufacturing, and sometimes in software development (my background is the latter).
I didn’t set out to make a Kanban board, I just used the process that felt most natural for making sense of the myriad feedback from my readers. But when I swiveled to grab a sticky note the first time, I laughed at myself.
As a final comment, the sticky notes themselves have been kind of a disappointment. You can plainly see in the pictures most notes have a raised corner, where the adhesive is failing. Most mornings I come in to a couple of rogue tasks on the ground.
2 Responses
Great Stuff Justin. Glad to see you’re getting down to Justin2.0
Thanks, Murf. Great to hear from you. Hope you and yours are health.
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