My Chapter Problem

When I started writing my book during NaNoWriMo, I merrily named each new section of the book Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4 etc in order as I went. Each chapter was a new file named for its chapter number. As I was writing them in order, this worked just fine. . . mostly.

I did run into a few moments when I realized that I left something out and needed to add a Chapter 10 part 2 or 10.5 or something but it only happened once or twice.

Then I finished NaNoWriMo and went back to my (very bad!!) habit of writing chapters out of order. So now I am finding that I totally misnumbered them and the book has gotten very very confusing. I have 2 chapter 28s and several .5 chapters. There are also a few chapters named not for their chapter number but rather by what happens in them. Sometimes this is useful (Ex: The Fight) and sometimes less than useful (I have a chapter called Apple Juice which is odd because Apple Juice does not actually figure into the chapter at all). This matter is compounded by chapters that are too hard to sum up in a few words. These poor chapters and named things like “After Apple Juice”, Pre-fight and “2 Chapters after Apple Juice” which might be the least useful name ever.

To make matters worse, I have also rewritten a few chapters meaning that there are some double chapter names that are actually two versions of the exact same chapter. In theory, one should be much better than the other but sometimes its hard to tell which is the newer one. I also cannot bear to delete anything I wrote since so many plot points have been cut out only to come back from the dead that I am afraid to delete these old versions.

I know what I need to do. I need to go through every single chapter and make myself a little spreadsheet. I already made this spreadsheet. The columns are Chapter #, Name, Perspective (each chapter is from the perspective of a different character), and what is the chapter about. This will allow me to organize this mess.

I hoped to be able to go through the chapters and get this started yesterday but I realize that this organization will be part of the massive rewrite process I wrote about the other day and then FREAKING LOST THE BLOG POST but I am not bitter in the least. As I said in that lost post, I cannot go back and start rewrites until I am through the whole thing and thus aware of everything that needs to be rewritten all at once so I am stuck with this confusing chapter mash-up for the time being.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have a third Chapter 28 to write. . . .