revisions – marginalia and such

writing

I have news! The draft is complete! Except, it’s not… not really, but you know what I mean. This draft, as it stands, is completely revised and mostly rewritten. I finished it on Saturday and had a nice lunch to celebrate, before writing up a quick plan for next steps.

The first step: proofreading and a deep review of the first 50 pages (plus, take care of all those notes I added in the margins).

Next: query and synopsis research, as it’s been a while since I’ve done this and need a refresh.

Agent research, list-making, and more to follow. But, for now, it’s in a happy place and I can relax when I go to my yearly library conference next week.

The stats:

Words (re)written in May: 9,998
Total wordcount: 80,163
Previous wordcount: 83,124
Words that survived from the last draft: probably 163

*Patting myself on the back.*

It’s a cold, wet, gloomy Sunday (cue Billie Holiday). Winter seems to have arrived (or what passes as winter in Miami), which means I want nothing more than to cuddle up with a book and a fresh cup of tea. No such luck.

This morning, in that lovely space between sleep and waking, I realized something that seemed so obvious, I’m a little ashamed I didn’t notice before. In the middle of what I thought were the easy chapters (quick revisions rather than full-on rewrites), I now see a glaring issue in the order of events that will require a complete overhaul of nearly 4 chapters. Luckily, they’re chapters I was planning to work on during February, but this will mean some serious attention to detail, and a much longer process than I thought. Nevertheless, what’s the point of revision if not to catch things like this? After all, no one is waiting on these revisions but me. I’m only accountable to myself, and I’m won’t skimp on editing for the sake of meeting a self-imposed deadline. Who knows? Maybe I’ll meet it after all.

January by the numbers:

Chapters revised: 4
Wordcount (new and rewritten): 12,492 (I started tracking. It keeps me grounded.)
1 chapter in progress, 3 to be reviewed and outlined