Revise my novel

I’m beginning ch. 13 revisions.

I’m beginning ch. 12 revisions.

I’m up to chapter 10.

I’ve done up to chapter 5.

I’m not anywhere near finished, but I think I may speak for a lot of writers when I say that revising is pretty damn scary when you’ve never faced it before.

This, for me, was absolutely terrifying. For a few weeks, I stumbled through websites, all of which bluntly shouted at my face “DO IT THREE TIMES, SEND IT TO PUBLISHER” and then left me in the cold.

I didn’t know how to do it though. Like when do I know when I’ve done it “right”?

It was about finding my own personal revision style, just like I found (subconsiously though may it be) my writing style. Keep trying until you find something you’re comfortable with/that you don’t delete immediatly and follow up with a nice run at the wall.

For an example, my personal revision style is to do it in sections, someplace different from microsoft word. Either get to a sight and make a private entry of some sort, or write it down in a notebook.

So good luck in finding your trick, whatever it may be. And good job for getting this far!

I’m not really giving up, but I regret scheduling my personal challenge for the same period in which I was training for a race. And I’m not about to give up reading for pleasure in a summer that promises the arrival of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So. I’m going to re-enter this thing and give it a fresh start.

but I’m putting it aside for awhile. I can no longer see it clearly enough to revise it further. I made all the revisions I wanted to make in response to my writing group. I made all the revisions I came up with on my own after that. I read the whole thing aloud and revised the language. I went back and tinkered with some of the language, emphasizing a few themes more. I found a word I think I overuse, and went through the whole thing again, pruning every instance of that word that I could.

In short, I’m going to focus on trying to market it, and doing some new writing. If I don’t sell it in the next, I don’t know, year? I’ll take another look then.

I went through a hard copy of my manuscript and marked revisions on it. Now I’m putting those into the Word version. I’m almost through chapter 9.

Once I’m finished doing these revisions, I’m going to ask P to take another look at the whole thing.

After that, I’m considering typing the entire thing into Word afresh in order to force myself to read every word again. My hesitation is that I’ll make new typos, after working to eradicate every typo from the existing piece. So maybe once P looks at the manuscript and I take care of any changes he suggests (if I want to make those changes) I’ll be finished . . . ?

Finished the list of revisions I’d made for myself. I’ll do more after I get feedback from my writing group on the last three chapters (unless they have nothing but praise and awe—hahaha!).

After that, I’ll go through the whole thing to fix it up, improve language, etc. But the plot is in place pretty much the way I want it.

I’m going to try to take a break from the novel until after the fiction group meets in the second week of January. That way I think I’ll be able to look at it with a fresher perspective. Vacation time!