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“My Son Went to Heaven, and All I Got Was a No. 1 Best Seller,” my essay about Heaven is For Real, my own fundamentalist background, and my lifelong doubt, appeared in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, underneath this illustration by Tom Gauld.

Just available in paperpack, John Agard's reimagining and modernisation of Dante's Inferno, fabulously illustrated by Satoshi Kitamura.

Extracted from the poet's Introduction:

... it struck me that since Dante was interested in the everyday Italian heard in the street, and since teenagers are so wired to the world of horrror movies, science fiction and video games, then they would feel quite at home with the virtual reality of Hell described by Dante with such magisterial and architectural precision. There you'll find your ascents and descents, your walkways and fortified gates, your spiralling levels not unlike a multi-storey car park....

... though The Young Inferno is told in 13 cantos IDante's Inferno has 34) I hope that 13 sounds about right for a teenager and is in keeping with Dante's regard for the magic of numbers.

In one of my recurring nightmares, I'm ascending the golden staircase that leads up to the pearly gates, and there stands St Peter in his robes and spectacles, frowning.

I clutch my bundle of documents, all 12 point Times New Roman double-spaced (or should that be single-spaced, where the synopsis is concerned? Or 1.5? I've consulted a bunch of archbishops on the matter - no one seems to know. Not that it matters to them, they're already in the system...)

I've counted my words, headed my headers and footed my footers. My printer's been well fed with the choicest cartridges and the smoothest, whitest paper money can buy. I've define my genre and 'placed' myself with respect to other authors, though I haven't mentioned Charles Dickens, George Eliot or JKR. My pages are pristine, my sentences grammatical, my metaphors well-chosen, poignant and surprising (though no longer so surprising, after nine revisions, to me).

I hand over my submission with trepidation.

St Peter casts an eye over Chapters 1-3 of my life. Shakes his head, tuttting solemnly. 'Typo on page 2,' he intones. 'I'm afraid this is completely unacceptable. We can't consider anyone who has a typo on page 2 of their life story. And this is even worse - an exclamation mark on page 4!'

Chapters 1-3 are dropped (passive alert!) carelessly to the ground, which I notice is soggy and slush-like, consisting as it does of a thick layer of decaying manuscripts. St Peter glances at my letter and gives another frown.

'I didn't mention that my children love my work,' I venture (no, sorry, I say. One must never use a different word for 'say'). 'Nor did I tell you anything about my garden, my goldfish or my penchant for golden syrup sandwiches.'

'Adverbs...' intones St P. 'Three of them. To say nothing of four adjectives in the first two paragraphs of your synopsis.'

I bristle. 'There may be the occasional adverb, but only where strictly needed to make my meaning clear.'

'Strictly?' bellows St Peter. 'That's an adverb if I ever heard one. Save it for those dancing programmes on TV. I've sent devoted believers to hell for less.'

'But surely...' I adopt a pleading tone. No, make that a wheedling tone. 'St Peter, please. I've spent a lifetime honing and polishing my life story. Is there nothing I can do to get you to read it - so you can actually judge my life on its merit

As I've mentioned before, I'm in the midst of revising my YA ms and it's been an interesting process -- read what you will into the word interesting. So last week, I came across an amazing checklist for each phase of the revision process on Natalie Whipple's blog. On one hand, it was great to recognize that I'm in that final, third phase -- what I call the "tweaking" stage. On the other hand, I was under the assumption that this last stage would be a piece of cake. I thought if major things like plot, story arc, and characterization were good to go, how long could it possibly take to tweak? Right. Can you tell this is my first YA ms? Now I know why something that takes 6 weeks to write can take 6 months to revise.

Here's what I've learned thus far about the revision process:

1) Revisions are like rabbits. You think you take care of one -- then you
turn around and there are 20 more staring at you, and not in a cute bunny
kind of way.
2) Don't use chocolate as a revision reward. Or if you do reward yourself
with chocolate, such as after revising each chapter, write fewer chapters.
Your waistline will thank you. NOTE: I'm totally kidding -- I sometimes
reward myself after each page! Chocolate rocks.
3) It's better to mark revisions on your manuscript with a purple pen.
Some red pen purists out there will disagree here, but corrections don't
seem quite so harsh when written in pretty colors.
4) Tweaking takes FOREVER. I'm at the stage of agonizing over every word
choice, verb, sentence structure, etc. and my eyes are crossing. I flew
through the first few revisions and this one is killing me -- I'm lucky if I
get through 10 pages a night. Please tell me this part gets easier/faster
with each completed novel. Even if it's not true, somebody please lie to me.
5) Revisions make your book better. Okay, this seems obvious. Like
when the NFL announcer says the key to winning the game is scoring the
most points. However, this last one if the reason I don't hate this process.
Yes, it's painful at times. Yes, there are nights I want to pull my hair out.
However, now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel -- just barely,
mind you -- it's still dim and looks like it's miles away. Yet, just knowing
it's there gives me the rush I need to get to the finish line.

What stage of the revision process do you find most challenging? How do you reward yourself? Note: if your answer to this one is that the process itself is its own reward, I don't want to hear from you.

Agent Mary Kole also has some fabulous revision posts such as this one. They can all be found on her Kidlit blog. Any other great revision posts you'd like to share?