Revising

At school visits, I often tell kids that the worst part of a big revision is right before you start it. That's when it feels like a huge, scary, maybe-beyond-you, overwhelming thing.

But after you begin, you see that the one big thing is actually a long chain of small ones.  I suspect that's true of most big projects.

When I'm past the point of receiving an editorial letter and my pages come back full of comments, my process is that I do every easy suggestion and change first. As I'm going through the pages, if I can't immediately make the change or suggestion, I rewrite what my editor said on a Post-it and stick it on that page and leave it there for my subconscious to work on while I continue forward.  I say to myself, "I will deal with this, but not now." That keeps me moving ahead.

Then when I reach the end, I print out the draft with all those easy things already dealt with. I transfer the Post-its to the new draft on the pages where they belong, and then I go through the book again, just dealing with those fewer harder things.

Yesterday I took that first step and worked my way through three chapters, turning that one big thing into a chain of small ones. And so far, I've only used three Post-its.