Revisions, part two

Finally I sent back the revised story, Flirting With Trouble, to my editor at Mills & Boon. To ease the pain of the wait I’ve started another story, the third book in The Price of Fame. Not that it makes waiting easier. I’m still itching to refresh my inbox every five seconds.
I promised you all I’d share my experience revising a full manuscript, so here we go.
I’ll admit that I was daunted by the revisions and since the focus was on the beginning and the heroine and hero’s work relationship had to change, I thought I would need a total re-write from chapter four.
Instead of trawling through a few pages of emails time and time again, I got out my notepad and bulleted the points in the story that had to change. It looked something like this...·         Alexa can’t be PA. Party organiser instead.
·         Ric doesn’t own hotel or building site, but aspires to. ·         Keep it fun, flirty and RIVA throughout. ·         Show what she does for a living sooner. ·         Make Ric more alpha. ·         He’s adopted. ·         He’s an adrenaline junky.
This helped me focus on the main issues in a way I could remind myself what I needed to do easily. By the time I got to chapter three I realised I needed to delete a few scenes which focused on her PA duties and alter them to bring Ric & Alexa together as partners. Luckily the curve in my new scenes brought the story to the same point as the deleted ones and I was able to stick (for the most part) with what I had in terms of the time line.
The tricky part was managing to keep the threads in sync with my new changes. My bullet point list ended up covered in scribbles to remind me of all the amendments I’d made to the story.
So all in all, revisions are great for the story, but tricky too. The learning curve was priceless and even if I don’t succeed in selling this story to HMB, I’ll be forever grateful for this chance to revise a book with their help and expertise.
Happy to answer any questions about the process :o)
Till next time XOXO