The Jan Plan
- by Suzi
So during NaNo, I was thinking about what to work on next. Of course there are revisions for my NaNo story, but I thought maybe I could tackle another one of my shelved projects. I love them all and hope to get to them sometime.
And now I have the perfect opportunity to do this. Christa Desir has invited us to join her in the Jan Plan. From her site.
“The Jan Plan will involve committing to finish one project. One. However you define “finish”. Just doing what you have to do to get one project out of your unfinished knitting basket.”
Now that sounds easy. No pressure. You define the finish line.
And I’m in. But now I have a question.
The WIP I picked needs a lot of work. When I read through it last month, there was quite a bit of, shall we say… telling. (I wrote this about 2 years ago before I knew anything about writing.) And there is a ton of backstory upfront and a lot of narrative and not much action.
Image courtesy of Ningmilo FreeDigitalPhotos.net
So I started wondering, maybe I should do a total rewrite. Open up a new document, have it next to the original, and start over? My original work would be sort of an outline, then and maybe this would be easier than making the changes inside the original.
Or do I go back into the original document and change things paragraph by paragraph?
I’ve never done this before, so I don’t know the best way to handle it. Have you done a total rewrite? I don’t foresee major plot changes, it’s mostly just the writing style.
Do you have any advice on the best way to do it?
