Revising takes patience

Revision update: Finally on chapter 9.

Ok, so you know how I keep saying I’ve figured out what I needed to do to fix the problems I was having with my first eight chapters? Well, something was still nagging at me. We were still taking too long to get into the real meat of the story. There’s a scene that I liked and it had a purpose in the story, but it was one more chapter getting in the way of starting the real story. Ah well, I figured. At least it’s interesting, but that nagging feeling was still there.

After exhausting all my options, I was satisfied with my first eight chapters and decided to move on. The next part is where the meat starts, so I had just been working on the initial chapters in a lump before.

At 3:30 Saturday morning, I was trying to lull myself into sleep with a re-run of Baby Boom and some hot chocolate and I decided to look over the next set of pages I was going to tackle, chapter 9. And there, in my sleepless haze, I found my solution — again — I think.

This is the third or fourth time I’ve come up with the solution for this same problem, and although I think it’s the best idea so far, I’m not kidding myself by thinking it will be the final rewrite.

Revision takes a lot of patience. I’ve talked about Holly Lisle’s One-Pass Revision Method on this blog a lot, and when I started revising this book, I decided to try it, but the further I get along, the more I’m convinced that revising in only one pass takes a LOT of experience. You have to have quite a few books and revisions behind you, like Holly has, to really be able to fix all the issues in one go. I think I have that instinct for when something’s not quite working as best as it could, but it takes me a little longer to figure out what I can do to make it work the best.

But no matter how many revisions a book takes to get it in tip-top shape, it’s worth it. Maybe I should have insomnia more often. 🙂

How are you with revising?

Write On!