Today, for their Road Trip Wednesday question for bloggers, YA Highway asked: Tons of writers are in the midst of NaNoWriMo, trying to stay inspired as we reach the dreaded middle. Share your most inspiring and/or motivational video, book, or quote on writing!
I’m in the middle of a big revision of REBEL AGAINST HEAVEN just now, and struggled with my revision tactics to start with. But I’ve found a plan that works for me:
- Disconnect completely from the internet. No computers. It’s all pen and paper from here on.
- Print out the manuscript A4, double line spaced, font size 12 (I’m on a Courier New font kick but Times New Roman is good too). Get a pen and a notebook.
- Read through the entire manuscript, out loud, making small edits on the page and making notes for bigger changes in my notebook.
- Don’t sweat about deadlines. I do what I can within my allotted time, I don’t stay up too late without sleep, I read normal books, and I don’t avoid fun ‘time wasters’ like anime and TV.
- When this is completed, I’ll spend some time planning the large changes before typing up the new draft.
I tried to do a digital revision with Scrivener, but that was too distracting. I also tried to do a ‘macro’ revision, focussing on big issues and ignoring typos and small issues, but that was too frustrating. In the end, I decided to wing it: just go with what’s comfortable and what works for me.
I’m not recommending this strategy for everyone, it’s just what works for me — it’s actually very unlikely to work for other writers, just like other writer’s revision systems completely didn’t work for me.
There’s a chance this might all fall flat on it’s face when it comes to implementing the major changes I have ahead and I’ll have to come up with a brand new system for the second round. We’ll see. I’m confident that having a tighter draft to operate on will work out well for me no matter what.