Going back to pre-school

So, I had a stellar night of revisions the other night–49 pages, boo-yah! Of course, I’m paying for it now. I’ve always known the ending of this book needed work, but I never really understood just what needed to be done. I was plodding along last night at a nice stable pace of 5 pages when I read a bit more and discovered I had repeated myself.

I am now going to try something completely different. I am going back to the pre-school for writers. I actually sat down in my classroom today, armed with construction paper, scissors, and glue. I also had the last 5 chapters of my book printed in landscape-style (Aside: I like printing my pages in a book format when I’m revising because I can read faster and I can see the larger flaws faster).

Anyway, I’ll admit there’s something liberating about scissors and glue. I could never do this with an entire novel, but for a section of about 65 pages, it’s very doable. I cut out scenes that I planned to keep, and I glued them down on bright red construction paper. I cut out bits of dialogue I liked, and made one big “trash” heap on another student desk. I’m almost afraid to see how much I cut out, but on the other hand, the stuff I’m keeping is solid. I also made notes about which scenes I need to add that I don’t have.

Next step: reconstructing it all. I’ve decided that the best way to move forward is to take my current 284 pages and save them as a separate file. I finished cutting and gluing one chapter today and tonight I’m going to retype it from scratch. As I retype it, I’m going to layer it with the description and emotion it needs. I also have two new scenes to write.

I made some pretty critical mistakes in this book, but they are fixable. I also wrote a lot of wasted scenes. Maybe I’ll use them in another book someday, but they don’t belong here. I think one of the toughest aspects of cutting scenes is the knowledge that I’ll have to write new ones to replace them. I dread that. But maybe, somehow I’ll learn from this.

In other news, two of my friends Stephanie Tyler and Larissa Ione just sold their first books within days of each other! Way to go!:dance: I just love hearing good news like that. It keeps me hopeful for my own dreams.

For those of you who write, what’s your revision process?