I made this video for RWA’s Two-Minute-Tips series, but I pulled because I no longer want it going out under the banner of RWA as it currently stands. (If you’re not a member, you will have no idea what I’m talking about, which is good!)
I did like 25 (no exaggeration) takes of this video, mostly to get it down from its original 12-minute (lol) duration. If you have heard me talk at conferences, you have heard me say I don’t have much to say about craft. I really don’t. I don’t know how to tell people to write books. But I do have a few little hacks that I rely on that have to do with how you organize your writing and your revising. This is one of them. I think of it as breadcrumb trail I leave for myself to make editing (either self editing or dealing with feedback from beta readers or editors) much easier later. It’s a trick for setting yourself up to invest a little time as you’re drafting to save yourself a lot of time later when you’re revising.
The silver lining of me distributing this myself is that I can also give you a link to download the template I use. I’ve made some annotations in it to briefly explain the columns. Thanks for reading this far, and thanks for watching! I actually had a lot more to say about this, including an entire column I deleted for the purposes of the time constraints of the original video, and I’m thinking about expanding it into a longer video and/or a conference presentation, so let me know your honest thoughts! I’m best reached on Twitter @jennyholi or via email at [email protected].