Little Assignments

A couple weeks ago, I finished the rough draft of my current novel. (It’s very rough and very drafty.) This novel was difficult to write, and I wanted to push on to the end, so when I came to something that needed more research, a thread that needed to be tied in someplace else, or a scene that lacked appropriate descriptions, I made a margin note with the editor function in Microsoft Word and kept going. 

Every rough draft needs to be improved, but setting out to “make the novel better” is a non-specific and often gargantuan task. Before I jumped into the second draft, I started addressing these little margin notes, working from the last chapter forward. Some are easily remedied while others have required many hours of research. So far, I’ve added about 2500 words. Next, I analyze structure.