Now what indeed: I’m still stuck in the quagmire of words and plot lines and characters and looking at my NaNo novel, wondering what to do with it.

Here’s my latest strategy. Will it be work? Who knows…. Remember that I had about 2 pages of notes on November 1 — no outline, only a couple of characters, and an extremely vague idea of story line. (Is that an oxymoron? Can something be extremely vague? If it’s vague, it’s, well, vague — and levels of extremity are impossible to assign. Are they or aren’t they? — OKAY, this is NOT the level of editing I want to start with!)

I printed it all out and put it in a 3 ring binder (a pretty one bought just for this:-) ) I am speed-reading through the entire thing once, sitting on my hands so I don’t take any notes. All pens, pencils, lipsticks, wood-carving tools, etc. are locked away to keep me from temptation. I am not near my laptop.

Then I’m gonna read through it again, more slowly. I’ll have a pad of paper and i might jot down some very rough thoughts at as high a level as possible.

The third read-through I intend to have a pile of index cards, and I’m gonna write a sentence or phrase about each scene or vignette on a separate index card. (It seems to me like different colors to signify something could be useful, but I don’t know what or how so I’ll probably just use whatever index cards I have.) I’m thinking of a scene or vignette as generally a 1-3 page piece, either part of a chapter or a short chapter. So one vignette might be Libby and Reed getting stuck on a ledge with a rattle snake, and Libby spooking the snake. The next vignette might be Reed’s interior monologue as he begins to figure out how unbelievably cool Libby is, as well as how hot…

Remember, I didn’t work from an outline or an idea or anything so the existing sequencing in my novel is at best, scrambled.

As I’m doing this, it should probably become clearer to me that some vignettes need to be put in different places. Some of them will need to go in the trash (actually, in a junk folder somewhere — you can never tell what you might be able to recycle), some might go into a totally different story, and some might work well within the novel if they get shuffled around. I suspect that ALL of them need work. And it should be clear that there are gaping holes, and hopefully I can jot down some notes on special ‘gaping hole’ index cards that tell me how to fill those holes.

I used to work in an office that had a lovely large conference room with a plain white wall covered with some kind of glossy stuff. I’d go in there with piles of sticky notes with all these disparate (I thought) data points and observations and slap those babies up all over the wall where I thought they might belong together — stand back and look at them, move them around some more. Over time, things came together in ways I couldn’t imagine from sitting with them at a desk.

For better and worse, I work at home now and don’t have that big open wall space. But I think I can move those index cards around on top of the guest room bed. As long as I turn off the ceiling fan! (Or maybe turn it ON when I get frustrated.)

So this may be backward — since everything I read says that characters drive the story, not the other way around — but now I want to draw up profiles of each of my characters and see if what I already know about them gives them the impetus to move the story in the direction the index cards are suggesting. If not, I may need to add more backstory to their lives, or change the vignettes, or something.

Note that I have yet to make a single mark on my draft. Now I want to read it again, and again not make any edits. Maybe this is another speed read to get the big picture in better perspective.

Then I intend to start revising at a high level, vignette by vignette. But not on this original draft copy. Add — or delete — more action, develop characters better so their actions make sense, look at POV more critically, add suspense where there isn’t enough to entice readers on….

After I’ve done this (this could be a looooong process, with a lot of loops going back and forth between vignettes and characters) I’ll put the vignettes together into a new document.

THEN I can begin to edit in more detail — to flesh out dialogue and description, to make better transitions.

After all that — if I’m still alive — I’ll get into nitty gritty proofreading kind of stuff like tenses, subject-verb agreement, passive voice, punctuation, word usage, etc.

SO: that’s my current game plan. Will it work? Will I stick to it, or decide later today that it is just another load of crap and this plan, along with my NaNo novel, should head directly into the trash and I should begin studying to become an actuary or something? (According to the Wall Street Journal, actuary — and not novelist — is the hot job of the decade.)

Inquiring minds want to know. I would love feedback on what you think of this process. And, of course, on what you are doing that works. Thanks!

Of course, the largest element of my writing is the incredibly boring and banal rambling sections that go on for miles and miles.  I’m gonna try to keep them to myself and then just put them out of their misery and my word count once I start editing.

**

“What’s the story on Roy?  He seems like an odd traveling companion.” Becca kept her eyes straight ahead on the road.

“Oh, Roy.”  Libby sighed before continuing.  “Buddy and I were on a back road somewhere a while ago and he’d stopped to take a pee.  When he was getting back in his truck he saw this snake sunning himself along the shoulder and he told me to watch, he was gonna run over the poor thing.  Well, I ran and got to that snake before Buddy did and just grabbed him up off the road.  Buddy was furious!

“But it turns out that Buddy is also afraid of snakes and so I told him I’d sic the snake on him if he didn’t watch out.  I could have sworn Roy knew exactly what was going on right then and there.  He relaxed with me right away, but I’ll tell you – Buddy got anywhere near him and he’d rear up and show him fangs.  Made Buddy nearly piss in his pants when he saw that; the only time I ever saw Buddy scared was when Roy looked at him.

“I think Roy and I are kind of kindred spirits now, you know what I mean?  I was able to save him from Buddy and in some small way, he was able to help save me from Buddy.  I’d never have been able to get away from Buddy that morning I saw you at the store if Roy hadn’t lunged for Buddy.”

Becca said a silent prayer of gratitude that she’d let Libby bring Roy with her.  Who knew?