Next Round of Revisions

I got my new editorial letter Friday night, so I’ve gone back into full-revise mode. Much smaller changes this time–not nearly as sweeping as before, and they should be a lot easier to implement. Each time I’ve been doing this, it’s been a learning experience. My gut reaction Saturday was to just revise the pieces Stacy had pointed out. That was when I’d just gotten the letter and notes, and I didn’t know how much time I had to work with before she needed the revision done. After some more emails, I discovered I have until June 1st, which gives me some more time.

So with that extra time, I’m rereading the book again and marking it up one more time with my own notes. Thankfully, it seems like all my hard work from before really has paid off. There’s much less that I want to change, and the changes I do see that I want to make are ones that can be done in a paragraph or two–or less. True, there are a couple of changes that will have to be spread across several chapters, but even these are just tweaks, rather than full-blown plot revisions.

If the last round of revisions consisted of a good bit of demolition and brand new construction, this one is more along the lines of switching the paint, doing some repairs and knocking somethings back to level. (To combine two of my most blogged about topics: house repair and revision. I wonder if I could work a dental reference in here somewhere? Wait–I just did!)

Schedule-wise, I want to be done with this revision by May 25th, because then I fly out to Utah to go present at Conduit. I technically could still be writing and revising then, but it would be ever so much easier to be done with this step. I want the reread done by tomorrow, and then I need to revise 20 pages a day to meet that deadline. I think it’s totally doable.

Tarnhelm will have to wait. And even once I’m done, I had the chance to have a nice long chat with my agent about Tarnhelm on Saturday, and he brought up some really good points about issues the book has that have to be dealt with. I need to think up some solutions and different approaches, but I think it’s all very doable. One thing’s for sure–this whole writing thing feels a lot more like a business now than it felt like when I was just sending things out to editors or agents.

I like it.