Monday, October 1, 2012

Revisions

I feel as if I've been revising the same WIP forever.  But that's only because I find every excuse not to work on it.  I'm one of those people who loves writing first drafts and isn't particularly fond of revising. 

Usually, once I dive into the work, I'm good to go for at least an hour.  It's the starting that's the problem.  I almost have to bribe myself (Hey, self, you can check Twitter ONLY if you revise one whole scene).

Tonight I've been working on one very, very long scene.  I need to delete chunks of it and break up the rest into shorter scenes.  And I have to move some stuff around, and add a few bits of info that are important for later in the book.  When I first looked at this scene tonight, the changes seemed insurmountable.  But now I'm 3/4 of the way finished with it.  Of course, that's taken me over an hour to get through, but the book will be better for it.

I'm just ready to have this manuscript revised and off to beta readers.  But I'm only on the plot revisions.  I still have to comb through it at least two more times - once for character arcs and once for continuity and stronger writing. 

Patience is not easy.