color-coded

I am so close to the end of revisionland I could throw rocks at whatever land it is that lies beyond revisionland from here.

Technically, I don’t have any more writing-writing left. But there is ordering and formatting and fun stuff like that between here and the point of done-done so it doesn’t feel finished yet.

It doesn’t feel finished in general, actually. There’s something missing that I can’t quite put my finger on. I’m hoping my team of fabulous beta readers will be able to help with that, and I’ll be able to give it another post-beta polish after they read it.

But for now it is index card time! I am sure most writers do this in outlining phases, but in my wacky, non-linear way I seem to have made a habit of writing out of order and worrying about how to put all the pieces together after the fact.

I’ve added and dropped enough sections from the previous draft that I have some serious reordering to do. So I made all new index cards.

They’re color-coded by type of chapter (circus tents proper got to be silver this time around, because metallic silver Sharpie is always good times) and then color-coded again by which characters are featured. These still need dates written on them, I have those broken down on a list (in approximate book order and again chronologically.)

Tomorrow I get to spread them all out on the floor and play the “no, this has to come before that” and “too much of this character in this area” and “Bucket, stop sitting on the index cards” game. It’s a good game, until kittens start eating the cards.

I am so ready to hand this off to the beta brigade, and distract myself with tarot kings and NaNoWriMo planning while I wait for feedback.