The Revision Process

I’ve been living and breathing the revision process for the last few weeks and it’s been a whole new experience.

It’s one thing to be able to set word count goals and knock them out day by day, but to sit down and begin shading in a book – chapter by chapter – is a lot harder than it seems.

“Think globally”

People have told me and that has been the thing I have been focusing on.

This weekend I have tackled the first six chapters. I have some revision notes from my CP, which have helped tremendously and now I’m just trying to clean up the dialogue and make sure things sound right – as well as fleshing out the setting and the characters. I just have a few more sections to re-write and then I want to send it over to my CP for her to take a look at this chunk in its entirety.

The cool thing about revising is watching the shading happen before my eyes. For example:

• Draft #0.5 (which was really a glorified outline) had the first section at 3 chapters and it was around 4,000  words.
• Draft #1 had it at 7 chapters and was about 8,500 words.
• Draft #2 has it at 6 chapters and about 13,000 words.

See, it’s so fun how it’s evolving! Have I mentioned I love writing? 🙂

I’ve also decided to never fully delete anything. I just copy it and paste it into a file called – deleted sections. I know, super amazing revising advice right there. Take note. 🙂

Through all of this, I am for sure identifying with the saying, writing is re-writing!

The hardest part right now is thinking and talking about something else other than my 2 year old’s bathroom routine (he’s potty training) and my book. I’ve definitely been alienating people lately, but I guess that’s the life of a writer in the thick of it.