Hi guys! Did you miss me? I know I missed you.
It’s been a crazy week, and I am really grateful to Mia and Lena for their interviews, giving me something to post when I didn’t really have time to make a proper post. Since Monday wound up being busier than I thought it would be, I shall tell you about my progress now.
And guess what? I finished a huge milestone for revision on Sunday.
Some of you may remember I started taking Holly Lisle’s class How to Revise Your Novel about two months ago. Lesson one is brutal, and I just finished. Huzzah!
Lesson one is the main editing slog, where I go through each page of my manuscript and make notes about the characters, the worldbuilding (even though it’s set in New York City, worldbuilding is still important), the plot (and all of those pesky subplots I tend to throw in there), any parts I feel myself skimming, and any parts I really enjoy. All of these notes go on their own separate worksheet, where I make a note of what is or isn’t working, and what might be the problem.
This is very time consuming, especially since I have already been over the manuscript twice before I started taking the class and flailing about. But I finished!
Of course, that’s just Lesson one, but hey! It’s one of the hardest lessons of the course, according to the graduates.
Now I am reading the next few lessons to see what I can combine. Because a) I am a few weeks behind because Lesson One took me so flippin’ long and b) Lesson Two requires going through your manuscript again. I am pretty sure I can simultaneously do lesson two and three, and perhaps even four. It’s not like I won’t be juggling this stuff in my mind eventually, since at the end of the course you learn how to put all of that together so you can do the famous One Pass Revision.
In preparation of lesson three, I bought the largest paperclips I have ever since. Seriously guys, these paperclips are four inches long. You use them to string your scene notecards together, and the other size the store had were hardly an inch long, and I was worried about running out of room. So I bought the big ones.
In other news, I finished reading The Career Novelist by Donald Maass, which is also available for free download at his agency’s site Here, and I am spreading the gospel. True, this book was written in the nineties, so some of the book market stuff has changed, but most of his advice is still relevant today. I highly recommend this book to all writers in all walks of life. Maass really sheds some light on how the publishing industry works, and how it affects you as a writer.
Well, I am off to continue my revisions. Have a great day everyone!
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