fiction – Page 23 – Meilo Zaborowski: Author

I’ve opened myself enough for the world to see my guts

Goal 1) Revise TAP 2

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 16, somewhere
Where I am: Lesson 16, uhh. Somewhere.
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:

So this lesson is where I go through and make sure I remember everything I wanted to change. And gather all of that information into one concise place.

And since there’s really no good place to put it, this is where I’m taking the time to go back and read the first book to make sure any references to the past are solid, and any possible inconsistencies are addressed. And damn, I don’t remember a lot of things I changed in the final draft. So there’s that.

Taking my time on this one. I wanna make sure I hit everything. You know, I’ve thought once before that this really should be something I think about when I start out and add to over the course of the class, and yet here we are. smh

Time keeps moving faster and faster

Goal 1) Revise TAP 2

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 14 complete
Where I am: Lesson 14 complete, Lesson 15 complete
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:

They say time heals all wounds, but they also say time is a cruel mistress. I’m inclined to believe the latter.

Which I realize that going through BOTH of the time lessons in a week makes it seem like that is not the case. But now that I have a system that works, while tedious, I can make really good time on it. Not to mention I already completed the crux of Lesson 15 several lessons ago (because I am impatient).

One lesson to go before the cut now. Yes I am eager, twitchy, and absolutely itching to rip this thing a new one. Literally.

There’s no sound but the engine’s drone

Goal 1) Revise TAP 2

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 13 complete
Where I am: Lesson 13 complete
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:

You know it’s bad when you go looking on the forums for answers to a question and find your own post from five years ago asking the exact same question. 🤦🏻

Lucky for me, the comments led me back to the spreadsheet I made for this exact issue in TAP. And my website doesn’t go back far enough to see what I was doing then, but I did find where I did this lesson for SYCU. Where I again didn’t do the lesson as written, I had already done the work beforehand using a technique from HTWAN.

SO. With all of that in mind, I adapted the spreadsheet from TAP and marked each of my scenes with which conflicts they touched on. Then, going through each conflict’s scenes, I made sure they all made sense, didn’t leave anything out, and came to some kind of resolution. Not all of them did, so I made notes on a few things that will need to be added. While I’m working on time in the next lesson, I’ll sort out where I’ll need new scenes, or rewrite existing scene cards to include the missing bits.

Onward to time! Which is tedious, but my method for working it out is pretty solid now, and when it’s all done, it is oh so satisfying.

Lesson 12

Goal 1) Revise TAP 2

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 12 complete
Where I am: Lesson 12 complete
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:

‘What happened to Lesson 11?’, I hear someone who’s actually paying attention whisper.

I skipped it. Why? Because Lesson 11 is about adding or cutting for length. If anything, I need to add, but I’m not nailed to a specific word count. (Ah, the freedom of self-pub.) As it is, I already know I’ll be adding, and this go around I’m pretty certain what I’ll be adding will more than make up for what I’ll need to cut. So. Bye-bye Lesson 11.

As for Lesson 12, it’s all about characters. And if there’s one thing I’ve subconsciously learned from Holly, it’s how to write with a lean cast. All of my named characters are important, and out of the grand total of three that are unnamed, only one is completely expendable. Lucky for me, said character is as easy to remove as one sentence. Done.

The rest of the lesson is writing down the purpose of each scene in my new outline and listing the characters in each. On to Lesson 13.

Wub-a-lub-a-dub-dub!

Goal 1) Revise TAP 2

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 10, 60+ LFS done
Where I am: Lesson 10, Focus Outline complete, all RLFS cards done, lesson complete
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:

I’m actually really stoked about how the cards came out. I’ve got pretty solid scenes, in a believable order, with all the extra bits I needed, and minus two scenes that weren’t doing anything helpful.

Is this the final layout? Maybe. I still have six lessons between this and the cut. But most of it is likely to survive as is.