Thursday, January 6, 2011

Post-It Love

UPDATE: I've had lots of you ask me what my process is and what all the post-its are etc ... so I came up with a plan. Stay tuned for more deets next week!

I watched Eclipse the other day.

And when I was done watching it ... I couldn't even come up with anything witty to tweet. So I just went off to work on my revisions.

Working on revisions reminded me about something I love: office supplies. Specifically, I really like post-it notes. Like, really. For the last round of revisions on one of my projects, I was doing some work around 5 specific points. Lucky me, I had 5 post-it note colors. Woohoo!

After some bonding with my printed out manuscript, during which I learned that when they say post-it notes are "super sticky" they're not jok
ing, this is what my office wall ended up looking like at the end of those revisions.


This was a new process for me, but I really liked it. And it worked well to keep my thoughts organized by key points or characters. Color-coding works, people!

So what's your revision process? Any easy-peasy tips to make things go smooth and easy? Yeah, I was just joking about that last part.

13 comments:

Unknown said...

When it comes to revision I print out my ms and get the highlighters out, making it very colourful with all the parts that needs to change.

Pam Harris said...

My life would be a mess without Post Its. They clutter my desks at work AND at home. :) Besides using Post Its, I also like printing out my manuscript and making notes with a colored pen. Changing the font in the manuscript is also a great idea.

Alicia Gregoire said...

Post Its just rock. What does each color signify?

Stephanie McGee said...

I have yet to come up with a revision strategy. I'll need one if I ever hope to get a manuscript query-ready. But whatever it turns out to be, I'm sure it'll be a very basic skeleton of a process because I'm just not a planner-thinker. If I try to plan out things too detailed, I get overwhelmed and it just doesn't work.

Elena Solodow said...

I love mechanical pencils.

What? Stop looking at me like that!

My revision process is a blue and yellow highlighter. Blue for phrases I like. Yellow for the stuff that must be executed promptly from the manuscript.

Meredith McCardle said...

I love that! I color code everything. Color coding is awesome. :)

I'm curious what the colors represent too! Plots/subplots? Characters?

Windy Aphayrath said...

Cheree - I tried the highlighters, but then I kept running out of room beside the place I wanted to make edits. I <3 colors too!

Pam - Post-its and I are BFF. I would be lost without them!

Alicia / Meredith - the colors rep'd a bunch of things, character depth, better relationship defining, sub-plot fleshing out ... me just wanting to decorate my office wall in a rainbow of post-its .... :)

Lisa Miles said...

I just go at mine with a pen (any color). But I do like your post-its. They're so pretty!

Christine Fonseca said...

Dude! I think I need to send you some more :D

Sara B. Larson said...

Wow, what a colorful and organized method! :) I probably should try something like that. I tend to just go for it on the computer. I do try to print it out and do it that way too because I catch more that way.

ali cross said...

So what I want to know is, how exactly does it work? It sure is pretty to look at!

Anonymous said...

I'm with ali. I want more deets! =D What do the different colors mean? What's your method? (See? Now I'm all ready to pry into your brain!)

Nichole Giles said...

I don't do the post-it method either, but I think I want to learn. Maybe it would help to keep me organized.