Editing/Revising

[Beth Fred]

I find my manuscript in the revisions process right now. I didn't revise my first ms because I felt there was no saving it. Ha! So, I'm new to novel length revisions. I have a few questions. When I'm writing a ms my goal is 2000 words a day. Sometimes at 1700 my brain is fried and sometimes it's 7000 and im still going. But every day until the story is told I try to write a minimum of 2000 words. Is there some such rule for editing? Like edit one hour a day? Or four hours a day? Or one hour at a time?

 

I've only had to rearragne whole sections once. Does that mean I'm not being critical enough? Does anyone have some kind of process they stick to when revising? If you're writing a sequel, do you usually wait until all edits are done before starting?

 

Thanks in advance for all of your help.

[Mary Jo Campbell]

Beth,

I'm currently taking Jordan Rosenfeld's online course Revise for Publication, where she teaches how to flag scenes that don't work, how to fix them and many questions you must ask yourself while revising a novel. I'm LOVING this class! First, she has us create a Matrix of every scene in the novel: characters, setting, date/time, what happens and what is the scene result (what's revealed or realized?) Very eye-opening. I'd recc. her class to everyone going thru novel revisions. I've also ordered her book Make a Scene, which explains in detail the steps of combing through an entire novel, down to dissecting each scenes' beginning, middle and end.

I'm also reading Stephen King's On Writing. Some good stuff there too on writing (duh!) and revision steps. King talks about a daily schedule (and even how long a first draft should "rest" before a reread - 6wks!!) Good luck!

[Beth Fred]

I've read On Writing and found a lot of that stuff very helpful. I'll check out Make a Scene. But I posted prematurely! It seems I will be doing a lot of re-arranging.

Mary Jo Campbell said:

Beth,

I'm currently taking Jordan Rosenfeld's online course Revise for Publication, where she teaches how to flag scenes that don't work, how to fix them and many questions you must ask yourself while revising a novel. I'm LOVING this class! First, she has us create a Matrix of every scene in the novel: characters, setting, date/time, what happens and what is the scene result (what's revealed or realized?) Very eye-opening. I'd recc. her class to everyone going thru novel revisions. I've also ordered her book Make a Scene, which explains in detail the steps of combing through an entire novel, down to dissecting each scenes' beginning, middle and end.

I'm also reading Stephen King's On Writing. Some good stuff there too on writing (duh!) and revision steps. King talks about a daily schedule (and even how long a first draft should "rest" before a reread - 6wks!!) Good luck!

[Alysia Mathews Broadfield]

Beth,

Check out this article by Annette Fix in the WOW Women on Writing Newsletter. It's a great article, and it also provides a list of resources to help you with your editing. I took an on-line class with Annette (on a different topic) that was very good. Red Pencil Round-Up: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers link: http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/40-FE7-SelfEditing.html

[Beth Fred]

Thanks Alysia.