I've decided I need to start my read-through of Ruby Ransome and Pandora's Box soon. As I mentioned quite a few blog posts back, I realized I had some substantial flaws with character motivation and the plot, so I'm having to rewrite much of it. Many of the main scenes will stay, as they do make sense with the new plot and motivation (more sense, in fact - I was trying to force something that wasn't working). But much of the small stuff needs to go, so rather than going in and tweaking every single scene and deciding what would stay and what would go, I am going to rewrite instead.
But first, I need to get my head back into Ruby's world of the vampire-ridden 1920s. I have been out of it for a long time. I have some reference books about the 1920s that I might reread in preparation for writing during NaNoWriMo, but more importantly, I need to go through the novel itself and mark what's staying and what needs to change.
You may remember me debating how I was going to revise. Of course, this isn't a standard revision, since it'll be primarily rewriting - I'm just trying to refresh my memory and get back into the atmosphere of the novel. But it's been the same debate for me anyway. Do I find my marked-up manuscript and read through it and all the handwritten revisions? Or do I read through the novel on a screen?
Ultimately, I decided that the best way for me to get it done was by reading on a very specific screen: my Kindle screen. After all, I want to read through it fairly quickly, hopefully in just a couple of days, and having it on my Kindle is probably the best way to make that happen. So I used Scrivener to compile it into an ebook, and emailed it to my Kindle. Now I'll be able to read through it there, and I can actually highlight and take notes about anything I want to remember when I'm rewriting.
Another option is of course to keep a note pad with me and use that to take notes. It might be a little faster when I want to make note of something, but of course it'll mean I'll have to find that part in the novel later, and then there's the matter of whether I have my notepad with me when I need it... So I think, even with the fact that typing notes on the e-reader will be slightly cumbersome, I will plan on using the highlight and note-taking features on Kindle.
Now the only question is when I'm going to do this. I have the ebook loaded on my Kindle now, but I've been working on some other things at the moment, more pressing things from my to-do list. I do think it'll make the most sense for me to read the novel in the last week or so before NaNoWriMo, so I'm in the mood and ready to write on November 1st. I also want to skim through some of my old research books that I have about the 1920s, books I pulled a lot of information out of for Ruby's story.
How about you? How is your NaNoWriMo prep going? Will you be ready to write in only three weeks?
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