Anything Worth Doing…

… is worth doing the hard way.

That’s how it seems to be coming together these days. My heart problems led to memory problems (probably due to low blood flow to my brain) and that in turn led me to stop writing altogether for a while. It’s really, really hard to revise a piece with any coherence when you get to the end of the scene and don’t remember the beginning, let alone the 84 scenes before that one.

My memory is a little better these days, but I’m putting a new method into my writing mix, hopefully to let me work around my current limitations and any worse ones that crop up in the long run.

I’ve build a database. MS Access, actually. A real database, and created a form in it that looks like a single sheet of paper. Actually, it can be printed to a single sheet so that I can have a paper reference if needed. Each ‘form’ contains the information for one scene in the book. Title, Scene number, PoV, Characters present (or mentioned), location, timeline info, general notes (description of the scene), revision notes, and information on the sharp details I pulled forward to ground the pieces and set the mood.

Filling out the database on a completed novel is tough, time consuming work, but in the end, I hope that doing it will allow me to continue working on my fiction even if the memory issues get bad again.

I guess this means I really want to be a writer, eh?

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