Revisions

Revisions are a part of every author’s life. You write a story, and when you’re writing it, you absolutely fall in love with the whole thing. It’s the greatest thing ever written, and then you go back and read through it–whoa.

It’s pretty crappy.

So, you go through again, and make it suck less. You do this a couple more times, and then realize you’re completely losing the sweetness of the voice from the story, so you convert back a revision, and then you send it to your best friend/crit partner/dog/whatever floats your boat. They read the story, and then get back to you.

If they’re nice, then they have some good things to say.

That makes me happy.

But, if they’re really nice, then they have something bad to say too, and that’s important for a lot of reasons, but mostly because you can’t be the only one to read your story. You need that advice–you need fresh eyes, and you need ideas.

Just, um– don’t let your mom read it. I always make that mistake, and then I get mad at her when she tells me how to change stuff. Apparently I’m still totally thirteen in my mind. (Which is kind of a good thing, since I write for young adults.)

But, I digress. If I were to revise this blog post, I’d probably lose the last couple of paragraphs, move a few things around–perhaps fix a typo or two. But, that’s the cool thing about blogging. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s a good way to just write daily when you are locked up in revising, and making your book better.

So, yaay for blogging.

I love my revisions that I’m working on right now. I think they are really going to make Sketch a more complete manuscript and I feel like the things I am doing will make me love it that much more. That’s the important thing about revising–you have to love the revisions, or else you’re screwed.

So, remember revisions are cool.