I have psyched myself up to  prune my novel-in-progress, Blues. I’ve sought advice from eminent tree surgeons on getting it under control before the roots cause subsidence or the whole thing crashes through the eaves. I needed to have a think about it’s overall shape, and how my ideas fit in the space available in my garden. 

My first attempt at visually mapping  Blues‘ plot and characters on a memo board was getting out of hand by Chapter 3 (see photo). But it did show me that I have already introduced more secondary characters than I have on my Facebook Friends list. Something to address. It also showed up two anomalies in my characterisation, as these early chapters were written over a number of months.

So, on the advice of a fellow writer (who is probably a lot less feeble with computers than I am), I downloaded free Scrivener software, worked my way through the “2” hour tutorial and finally went to bed 36 hours later, weeping. I may exaggerate. The prospect of transferring my existing 45,000 words to Scrivener and cross-referencing it all from scratch (retrospectively) is mind-blowing, though I think it would be a useful tool. One to get to grips with once I’ve finished this project, perhaps.

For now, I am going to rely on the ability of my brain to retain multiple threads, and hope that my belief in my characters will help me remain consistent in describing their attributes and actions. I am going to plough on (not quite the right metaphor here) with my first draft, hacking out any dead wood as I go, and being ruthless in editing out branches which,although they may be healthy enough, are creeping in the wrong direction, blocking out light and annoying the neighbours.