My Insides Match My Outsides

/ Tracy Abell

For the past several days I’ve been working on the first 90 pages of my YA, zooming in on one particular relationship between two characters. I first went through the pages and highlighted every interaction between them in yellow. Then I went back to the beginning, highlighting in red the words I want to delete and using green highlights for the new words I added. It’s been a slow process but I feel as if finally, finally these characters are unfolding at the right pace and that I’m avoiding the dreaded Emotional Ping-Pong (something that was rampant in a YA I read over the weekend).

So imagine my delight when a few minutes ago I opened my computer to resume work on my project and I realized the screen mirrored the glorious colors outside.More fall leaves and computer screen 001

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

6 thoughts on “My Insides Match My Outsides”

  1. I like using colors too, though I rarely take the time to do what you’re doing (I could definitely stand to do it — and I need to take the time…sigh). Yay for progress!

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    • Well, I’m here with an update, Robin. Using colors most definitely takes time. I ended up spending more time on this than necessary because of formatting between Word and Scrivener (something a computer-literate person probably would have avoided). So I guess the moral of this story is, feel free to use the colors but try to have them work for you, not you for them. HA.

      P.S. I still like the look of a page in various highlights. 🙂

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    • You’re absolutely right, it WAS festive. And I think (know) that was part of the attraction for me. Also, those colors really got me to focus in on the words rather than the bulk of the scenes. However, there’s a limit to how much time I should spend in Highlight Land; there can be such a thing as Too Much Festive.

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