I've been working hard on my novel over the past month, mostly reading through it and summarizing each scene and chapter so I have a better idea of where I'm going. Organization and details have never been my strength, so while I know what needs to happen, what the themes are, and where the action is leading, keeping track of all those little details was proving to be overwhelming for me. I found myself unable to distinguish between what I could cut, what was necessary to keep, and how to structure the things that were necessary. I even quit writing for a week and considered giving up completely. After deciding that I couldn't give up, I took the advice of a writer friend and purchased Scrivener, an inexpensive software for writers.
While Scrivener is helpful in a variety of ways, one of my favorite features is the notecards, where I can summarize chapters and scenes on little notecards that are attached the document containing those chapters and scenes. Then I can choose to look only at the notecards. This is so helpful for arranging and rearranging the sequences of events, and I don't have a million notecards to carry everywhere and inevitably lose.
The best thing that came out of purchasing the software was some much-needed encouragement. As I read through the first draft of my novel again, typing my summaries out on the little notecards, I noted how boring the first half of the novel felt. This was particularly discouraging, because you think, "If these are my ideas and characters and events and I don't even think they're interesting, who else is going to think they're interesting?" Again, it's enough to make you want to give up altogether.
But halfway through, something happened. Everything just came alive, and I was not only interested in what was going on in the story, but I found myself thinking, "This is
good." There was even one chapter where I realized that when I revised it, I probably wouldn't need to change very much at all. If being bored by your own work is one of the biggest discouragements you can face, then really loving your own work is a huge encouragement. After all, if you can know what is going to happen and have read it a few times before as you were writing and revising and can still really enjoy it, then you feel confident that you can entertain others as well.
So now... to make the first half as good as the second.
