Let's talk about... tenses. (Mmm. Sexy word.)
My writing process is... I'd call it haphazard but that's lending it too much dignity. I write in notepads, in Scrivener, in email drafts, whatever I have in hand when the mood strikes, which is not often. (Pro Tip #1: Don't wait to write until the mood strikes.) I jump around between different scenes, I rarely start at the beginning, and I certainly never wrap things up at the end. (That's a lie, sometimes I do.)
And eventually I have to assemble the mess into one location (Scrivener) and start editing it. I'm doing that now with a story about a busty bridesmaid, and I'm learning I had some trouble with... tenses.
The story opens in third person, past tense. The next scene is present tense. The scene after that opens with past tense, but switches to present halfway through. That happens in two scenes. Then around scene five, I suddenly jump into first person present. Which IIRC is the first scene I actually wrote.
This makes editing a challenge, which leads me to more Pro Tips:
Pro Tip #2: Read the last thing you wrote before you start the next scene. Not all of it, just a few sentences. Remind yourself what you're writing.
Pro Tip #3: Read the whole story before you start your first editing pass. I rewrote a bunch of scenes into third person present before I got to the first person present scene and decided I liked it more. I can't afford that sort of wasted work!
And now back to it. Got to fix those... tenses. *shiver*
