Cleaning house

Well, I've not written - or even somehow worked on - my story in over a week. Bleh. I had hoped to start today, but by the time I was done taking the Jeopardy! contestant test (yes, I am that much of a nerd) online it was too late to really dig in.

I decided to do something, however, so I started organizing the Excel spreadsheet in which I keep track of my chunks with file names, word count, etc. (That's a subject for its own blog post, if I ever get around to it.) I finally figured out how to link my filenames with the actual file so all I have to do is click to open it. I went through all my current chunks and reformatted them to the paragraph and line spacing I wanted, updated my word counts, and tossed out a couple of scenes I decided a long time ago weren't really part of the story.

That last hurt, 'cause I lost almost 4K in those two scenes alone. But I'm not ruled by word count - I'm ruled by making the story the best it can be. So I'm okay with it. And I rediscovered a lot of good jumping-off points built into the stuff I do have, so I have a lot of places to start writing again when I come to it.

Tomorrow I'm going to begin with the reworking of all current scenes into deeper POV and smoother style. I'll be looking for ways to add depth to the scene and trying to cut unnecessary "stage direction." Also checking for consistency across the storyline and such. Getting all those done and writing another 2K (for a monthly total of 5K) by this time next week is my January goal. February is looking like a research/organization month, mainly, and then I'll be into writing big time starting in March.

Well, that's the plan, at least.