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Revision update: Going well. I’ve been getting up early and doing about a chapter a day.

Being the only one to know the full story of my book has been driving me crazy. I think it’s good. I’m excited about it. But there’s always that little voice in the back of head telling me that I might have lost my mind. Don’t you love that little voice? Jerk!

My critique group has been reading the book, five pages every two weeks, but that’s slow going. So, I got my husband to read the full manuscript late Sunday.

There’s a huge benefit to getting people you trust to read your full manuscript. Critique groups are fabulous, but the same people don’t make it every week and a lot is forgotten over two weeks. So, in a critique group alone, you might miss great continuity notes that can only really be picked out if someone reads the whole thing. My husband pointed out descrepencies in different chapters, a few things that didn’t make perfect sense. These chapters had been read by my critique group, but without knowing what’s in the older chapters, they would never have found these problems. Also, his findings were things that made sense to me in my head because I knew backstory that wasn’t in the manuscript–another good reason to have someone else read the book.

Your spouse or significant other isn’t usually the best person for this job. Mine is a very good writer himself and will be brutally honest with me, although I do encourage him to tell me the good stuff too. But our partners in life are often the easiest to convince to spend a few hours or so reading our work, even if they might be too lenient on us.

But writers are helpers, and we know we are all in the same boat together. Reach out to fellow writers, in your critique group or other group, and ask them if they’ll be willing to read your manuscript, offering to do the same for theirs. It definitely helps to have that second or third eye and to have it on the whole book instead of just five pages every couple of weeks.

Do you have someone who reads your work? How did you find them?

Write On!

Revision update: It’s moving along, slowly but surely. I’m on around chapter 6.

There’s something wonderful about revising. In the first draft, you’ve mixed up all the ingredients and baked the cake; in the revision, you’re topping it off with the perfect frosting and decorations. Well, sort of. But it is the time when you make your story as pretty as it can be.

When you’re writing the first draft, you don’t have to worry if sentences aren’t sparkling with squeeky clean grammar. You don’t have to worry if things don’t completely make sense. Writing the first draft is like jumping into the deep end and not worrying about whether the water will be warm, cold, slimy or whatever as long as you can make it out at the other end. Revising is taking that water journey and turning it into an Olympic medal-worthy dive.

Ok, my metaphors are a little shaky, but I guess the point I’m trying to make is that when you’re working on your first draft of a book, it’s ok to mess up, it’s ok to get crazy and let it all hang out. But when you’re revising — like I am now — it’s time to rein things in, to be more critical about the story, plot, characters, writing. To me, it’s harder.

Now, on one hand, I enjoy revising. It’s the hard work that polishes up a manuscript so it shines. And when some sequence or something is not working, finding the way to fix it is great, awesome, a high.

But the thing about revising is, it can be so nerve-wracking. Should the character do this? Would this work better? Would this scene be better placed earlier? Or later? Does the story need this scene? I’m not one known for my decision-making, so you can imagine how many times I question myself in my head.

There are so many questions to consider, and sometimes, the answers aren’t what we want them to be, like when we have a beautifully written sentence or paragraph that we’re so proud of but deep down we know it doesn’t add to the story and just slows the reading so it has to be cut. These are hard choices, difficult decisions to commit to, especially for those us who are newer at the game.

But those of us who are newer, have to be more and more on top of these things nowadays. Agents and editors are busier than ever, and many agents don’t take on projects unless they’re publishing-house ready. Same with editors. So, our books don’t just have to be better than the others in the slush pile; they have to be as good or better than the ones on the bestseller lists.

So, it’s easy to imagine that doubts can weigh heavily on us when we’re in the revision stage. I’ve been having them a lot lately, to the point that I decided to move away from my paper-only-computer-when-I’m-done revision method to start putting corrections into my computer for the first eight chapters and see if they’re working, see if I’m heading in the right direction. I need some assurance that I’m making the right decisions.

And how do we know? Well, critique groups and beta readers are an enormous help in times like these, just don’t ask them to read your work after every little change.

But mostly, confidence is the best way to battle these doubts. Even agented and published writers have doubts about their new works, so it’s not just for the newbies. But having confidence in what we’re doing can keep us moving forward. To build that confidence, keep writing, and writing, and writing. AND keep reading, and reading, and reading. The more books you read in the genre you’re writing, the more you’ll know a good sentence, paragraph, chapter, plot, etc., when you read it, and you’ll be able to see it in your own work too.

Facing any doubts lately? How are you battling them?

Write On!

Done today: Chapter 4

Revision remaining: 149 pages

Daily pages needed to be finished by end of November: 3.5

Got some more revision done this weekend and figured out some things that had been bothering me, which was great. I’m going to change one chapter into two chapters with more stuff added in, so I might just do that in the computer rather than paper tomorrow morning.

I know, weird to be putting stuff IN, when I should be trimming, but I’m also trimming other areas, and I think the change will make the flow better.

Either way, it’s worth it to try. The new version might not work, which is why I’m already working with a 2 version of my book’s Word doc. But, it’s always best to try something and it not work than to not try and lose the opportunity for finding something that might have worked really well.

If you rewrite a scene five, six, more ways, and it takes longer, better that and you find the best version of the scene, than writing it one way and it being only mediocre.

That old saying, writing is rewriting, is so true. Take the time to rewrite as much as you need to try new things … to explore the story. It’ll be worth it.

How many times have you re-written the same scene?

Write On!

Typing The End after spending months or even years writing a book is an exciting, thrilling thing. But when it’s done, what do you do?

After celebrating with a nice dinner and good bottle of wine, if you’re like me, you want to scroll all the way back up to page 1 and start revising. But WAIT!

You’ve had these characters and this story floating around in your head for all these months, and although you’re going to miss being around them for a little while, you’ll gain more if you keep a bit of distance.

Because we have the story in our heads so much, if we re-read it now, we’ll most likely follow along the same paths we took in our first draft, because it’s familiar. But if we wait, at least two weeks but preferably a month or two, we have the opportunity to see the story fresh in a new light. And with that, we have the opportunity to take the story to a new level of creativity, in the action, dialog and words.

At a seminar I attended years ago, one thing has stayed with me: Never settle for your first idea. The more ways you think about writing a scene, a line of dialog or a description, the more it’ll be your own.

Ever seen a movie trailer or read about a book and thought, Hey, that’s like my idea? As the seminar speaker reminded us, people often have the same ideas — I don’t know why, perhaps because we all have similar experiences that we get our ideas from.

As that is true, to make our work as creative and our own as possible, we need to dig down to the fifth or sixth, even tenth idea of how to do that scene, line of dialog or description.

Digging down to deeper creativity, will also give our work that strong voice we always here about — our voice — and make our work stand out in comparison to all the other manuscripts trying to find an agent and/or editor. Especially in the current economy, when both agents and publishing houses are being more choosy about which books to invest time and money in, standing out is all the more important.

So, what to do when you’ve finished your book? Start on your next. You don’t have to finish it before you go back to researching your last book. You don’t even have to start writing, but start thinking, start researching, start planning. Let new ideas and characters float around in your head. Get as prepared as you can be, then take a break, and do your revision. Getting your mind focused on something else will help make you that much fresher when you go back to the revision, and this preparation time will make you ready to roll when you’re done with your revisions and can move onto your next project.

What are you working on?

Write On!

I’m done! Finished. Complete. The end.

It was a great moment, typing The End after my last sentence. I enjoyed it for about 45 seconds, then opened another Word document and started typing notes on all the things I have to revise.

Part of me is anxious to begin the revision right away, and I might do some this week, just a couple parts that I know how I want to rework them, while they’re fresh in my head. But other than that, I’m going to try to resist revising too soon. Giving myself a little break before looking at the story again will allow me to see the book with a fresher eye and do a better job in the revision, maybe cutting down the number of revisions I have to do. We’ll see.

I might even try Holly Lisle’s One-Pass Manuscript Revision Method.

In the meantime, I’m going to sleep late a few mornings and start working on book three. I have a number of ideas stored away, but I’m not yet sure which one should be my next novel. I’ll start doing some research, let the characters float around in my brain for a little while, and see what speaks loudest.

How are you doing with your writing?

Write On!

We’re in revising mode, and literary agent Nathan Bransford posted a Revision Checklist on his blog today. It’s a good list, with lots of things to consider when you’re looking at your work critically.

I’ll add one that was in the comments: Have you used all five senses? This is somemthing I mention in critique groups a lot. Writers write about things the characters see and hear always; that’s description and dialog. Taste comes if eating is involved in the story anywhere. And writers usually remember to add touch in description. But smells are often overlooked, and smell can really add to a story’s authenticity. To truly create your character’s world for your reader, give your reader a full picture of the world by incorporating everything the character senses, including taste and smell. The reader will be brought into the story that much more.

Here are some other links about revising:

Revising a Novel: The Importance of Structure

Plot Revision for Novel Writers

Revising Your Novel by James Scott Bell

Tips on Major Character Revision

Darcy Pattison’s Revision Notes

And of course, Holly Lisle’s One-Pass Revision Method, which I’ve written about in a couple posts (Revising Your Manuscript and Revising on Paper vs. Computer).

If you know of others, please give us the links in the comments.

Write On!