Merger

Okay, so the chapters, all 20, are now in one Word document. Now time for more polishing and cutting until Monday. The overall document is far longer than I anticipated. I was actually concerned it was too short.

Polishing

The first draft is done! I have a good bloc of time between now and Monday to go back to the beginning and clean things up chapter by chapter. I'm not gonna clean everything--that defeats the point of a first draft.

Shutting Down the Cook Shack

On schedule to finish the first draft Sunday or Monday and spend next week revising so I have a rough first draft ready March 29.

Early visions of how to pace chapters are now being executed--don't know how I remembered many of these placeholders. As usual, the real quotes from real people make it all worth it.

2 Weeks

...until the first draft is done! 10 more chapters to go, as planned.

Another Week

Another 5--at least--chapters revised. Since there are 20 slots for 20 chapters, it takes 2 weeks to revise half of it. Not bad.

Beginning, End, Middle

A good point to remember for future writing...I've done this several times and it works magically...figure out a potent quote for the beginning and end of a chapter and the rest will take care of itself. It's not just about establishing a natural point in time for the chapter to inhabit, it's about setting a tone, an emotional arc.

A beginning quote or scene-setting description or finisher should leave the reader with a distinct emotion that is also colored by either the end of the preceding chapter or the beginning of the next chapter.

That makes the decision of what to use for the end of the final chapter doubly important.

I think in a good biography, the foreword works on the reader as much as the beginning of the first chapter.

Movin', Shakin'

Slicing and dicing chapters down to 20/30 page size. It's relatively easy. Equally important in this stage is correctly sorting block quotes and big pieces of interviews. Lots of things are out of order right now.

I'm doing a chapter each day from beginning to last. It changes things up nicely. When I get to the end, I'll have forgotten the first chapter. That's the point.