So the last few weeks, I’ve been in revisions, but I’m doing that along with my regular writing. It hasn’t made for fast revisions. I’ve gotten a lot of writing accomplished which is great, but sometimes it feels as if I’m not making a lot of progress.
But since I have a list of what needs to be done, seeing the highlighted marks over the scenes I’ve finished shows me that I really am cutting through what needs to be done.
I added a step to my revisions because this book needed it. I knew I needed to break down the book and find the weak spots. So I went through scene by scene making a list of the major problems.
In this book, it’s a lot of adding scenes. I found I’d left some holes and gaps in the plot that left huge story questions unanswered. Can’t do that.
At times, I have to remind myself that each book is different. Some need to be cleaned and spruced up, maybe a minor scene rewrite. Others need to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. This one is not quite that bad.
I am excited about the changes I’ve made to it though. It’s already so much better than it was when I began. I still have a few scenes to add to it, but I’m feeling better than when I did my first read through.
I know which book will be next on the list to revise. It doesn’t need as much work so it should be a quick revision without tons of added scenes that take the word count upward and consume more time. Sometimes adding words in revisions is so much harder than actually getting words down in the first place. You need to make sure that you’re not putting in dialogue about something that happens two scenes later. It’s a lot of double checking.
Also this week, I revised a couple of my spreadsheets that I use to keep track of my word count and characters, etc. I needed some different ways to categorize my progress and track how I’m doing. Once I started thinking about it, I had to get it done. (It became one of the things my mind fixated on and it interfered with other things.
Now, I have to go find two pages of notes (not revision related which is why they aren’t with me,)
sit down and crank out some new words on the WIP.
Happy Reading!
