Wasn’t I just talking about becoming more organized and that my revision outline was a good start?

After Monday’s post, I began revising per said outline. Unfortunately, yesterday I experienced a mini-mental blowout when I arrived at this question: Move Chapter 14 back so that right before Chapter 17?

Because I’m not organized enough to have a chapter-by-chapter spreadsheet–the global view, you might say–I began flipping through the hard copy, ever more distracted by the marginalia (Wait, did I fix that comment? Really?) not to mention befuddled.

Lo, after an hour of this, a revelation came upon me like a bossy pointing finger and voice descending from the clouds. Thou shalt use an Excel spreadsheet. Thou shalt list each chapter in organized fashion. 

Oh man.

But. Remember I mentioned that I received a spreadsheet from my day-job boss? Hmm…And I may or may not have mentioned novelist DeAnna Cameron’s discussion about spreadsheets just last month. (I left a comment or two on her blog because I was fascinated by her organizational prowess.) Hmm…

So, using the spiffy spreadsheet on hand and stealing DeAnna’s column headers, I came up with what you see here. Cool—and colorful too! It’s my miracle for the week. And, guess what? Laid out tidy like that, it’s too obvious that, of course, Chapter 14 must be moved back two chapters. Duh.

I like spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are good.