How a Kanban-Style Trello Board Made My Novel Revision Easier

This simple, visual three-column system helped me keep track of all the edits I needed to make, big and small.

A few days ago, I turned in the revision of my latest middle-grade novel. My awesome editor at Knopf had given me notes on a few things she wanted me to focus on in this pass—fleshing out a couple of characters or relationships; deepening a primary theme; adding more setting description in certain passages. And here and there I needed to address smaller issues: an out-of-character moment here; a clarification there.

With prior novels, I’ve worked from paper notes—a printout of the editorial letter and marked-up manuscript—checking notes off as I address each one. This time around, I created a Trello board with three simple Kanban-style lists: To Do; Doing; Done.

Kanban is a scheduling system developed by Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota, that has been embraced and adapted by productivity enthusiasts around the world.

On the To Do list I created a card for each element I wanted to address, big or small. When I sat down to work each day, I moved one card to…