goals – Page 6 – Meilo Zaborowski: Author

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.

“That’s how you get ants!”

Goal 1) Revise TAP 2

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 10, 30+ LFS done
Where I am: Lesson 10, 69 LFS done, Focus Outline complete, 40/69 RLFS cards done
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:

Out of the monastery! That actually went pretty well. I didn’t even forget any scenes (which wouldn’t have been terrible, but definitely an indication of importance), but I did intentionally leave at least one out, and added a few to fill in some holes.

The hard part here is sorting out the order of scenes in the middle. I did a decent job when I did the Focus Outline, but there were a couple of places I decided to move things around.

So, now is the part where I put the revision lines for scene (RLFS) on color coded index cards. The neon eye-searing kind. Hot pink is only for completely new scenes, something I decided to change up from last time where it was also for scenes that needed heavy rewriting. Orange will be for heavy rewriting, where I can still use bits and pieces of what I’ve already written. Yellow is for moderate rewriting, and green is for little to no rewriting.

What’s interesting to me is how many are green. Like, I’m not trying to create less work for myself or ignore how much work is needed, but I honestly feel confident that I won’t need to change much within those scenes themselves. Most of the work will be in the little details, reordering scenes, and the addition of missing scenes. The meat of the story I’ve written is pretty solid, all things considered.