In my last entry, I wrote of "brooding" over the current structure of BLUFF (book two in my Lark Chadwick Series.)

Yesterday I had a great creative experience: I call it "flitting."

It starts with good organization.

In my computer, a new manuscript draft gets a new folder. Each chapter/scene gets its own sequentially-numbered slot along with a nickname so that at a birds-eye glance I have a visual cue as to what happens where.

I also have a scene outline -- one page (it's become 6) where all the scenes are thumbnailed. I've labeled one scene outline file "actual" because it represents the current snapshot of the story. A second scene outline file is "experimental" because it's the rearranged result of my brooding, but not yet finalized.

All the ponderous brooding and wholesale rearranging I did over the past week paid off yesterday when I discovered "flitting."

Here's how it works:

I look at the experimental scene overview. I see that some scenes are fine (for now); I see that some scenes need to be added; I see that some scenes now need major reworking. In Flit Mode, I can decide to dip into the manuscript where ever I want, make the necessary changes, jump back to the scene overview to decide what needs to be worked out next. I don't have to get bogged down on tedious line-by-line edits (yet). For now, I simply flit all over the manuscript making repairs, smoothing, adding, fixing.

It feels great. And I'm making progress (or am sufficiently deluded into believing that I am). Of course, all you serious writers out there have been doing this -- or something way better -- for years, but for me it was a Eureka Moment I had to share.

Hope it helps.

JD

www.johndedakis.com