Monday 29th March 2021

Today I turned my eyes so square from staring at the screen I had to have a kip this afternoon, just to rest my eyes.

I’m now going through my checklist for 4S.  This consists of two parts.  One part dealing with plot issues, such as elaborating certain parts, or ensuring that some element of the story retains some consistency  (I do have a habit of elements of my stories changing in size throughout the story.)

The other part – and the part I did today – was searching for select words.  This is a tic elimination exercise.  There are certain words I use in select situations that should be changed or eradicated.  It’s not as simple as just searching and replacing.  I have to go over each sentence and see whether the word should stay or be changed.

I have 8 words currently.  And these appear as much as 140 times in the manuscript.  That’s around 800 sentences I need to check and possibly alter.

And whilst MS Word will allow you to bring up every found search in a document (providing there are not too many responses) I need to make these changes in the master document in Scrivener.  So I’ve been searching on one screen, finding passage on another and then editing, until I decided it was easier just to search all 40+ scenes in Scrivener individually.

It’s taken me all day to get 7 of those words done, by which time my eyes physically hurt from the strain, and I felt I just wanted the manuscript done.

I’m hoping the plot points won’t take more than a couple of sentences each, but I have a mythical creature whose size varies from the height of a horse to the height of a double-decker bus.  And it appears in a number of places.  So naturally I’m dreading that.

I’m now at the stage where I’m fed up with this manuscript.  I want it done and sent away.  It can be a real struggle not to rush or skip the notes at the end.  Who cares if the creature changes size?  Surely no-one will notice?

That’s where the perfectionist in me is really useful.  As much as I ‘hate’ this manuscript right now, I just can’t let it out the door without fixing those errors.

So instead, I’ll moan and grumble for a couple more days if I have to.

Need to get it done though:  I’ve got 3 outlines waiting, plus there’s a possibility of further work down the road.

Things are starting to feel busy.  And I quite like it!

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