Are you a tortoise or a hare in your writing (or a strange hybrid of both)?

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I've realized lately that I may be a hybrid of a tortoise and a hare when it comes to my writing. I'm not sure what it should be called though: a hortoise? a tortare? (though they both have a certain ring to them, *grins*).

Anyway, before I get distracted with names, and thoughts of what a tortare would look like...

I wrote my current WIP, FROM THE OTHER SIDE, in less than 3 months, and probably closer to 2. I pantsed the whole thing, I must admit, something I doubt I'll ever do again. But the words flew off my fingers onto the computer, the characters came to life before my eyes, and my plotline sprang into shape with remarkable ease (even if it did require some heavy shears/clippers/cutting implements/dynamite to prune it afterward).

I was a hare, and proud of it, and I didn't stop once until I'd crossed the finish line. I didn't even stop to rest under that nice shady tree along the way.

Then came revisions!

And I became a tortoise.

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I've been plodding along in revision hell joy for 9 months now (and I won't draw any comparison to the pregnancy thing *grins*). Not a particularly long time in the scheme of things, but it feels long to me after such a quick first draft turnaround. Especially when I see others (including certain awesome CPs who shall remain nameless) who seem to whiz through writing AND revisions, with a speed and efficiency that leaves me amazed.

I've been thinking through the reasons why my revisions are taking me so long:

• as mentioned above, I pantsed rather than plotted with FTOS, so I've spent a lot of time fixing things, getting the structure of the manuscript right, tweaking the plotline, getting to know the characters, and making sure I'm happy with the way the story reads
• I have a limited number of hours during the day to write/revise, and those hours are eaten into by things like critiquing for my CPs, my Crusades, blogging, reading, and all the "daily life" stuff
• I'm a perfectionist, and I want my manuscript to be the best it can be before I query (there are different schools of thought on this, and I may well do a separate post on this soon)
• I want to give myself my best shot at getting an agent by learning as much about writing as I can before I query
• my health has been very bad the last few months, and unfortunately this has impacted on my revision time (and my time for anything else, for that matter)
• simply, I don't want to rush

I'm not quite chafing at the bit--not yet--and I'm taking comfort from posts such as this one from Mary Kole, which gives great advice about being patient. And I am enjoying my revisions, believe it or not. With querying in sight for me, it's all good in the end. It does make me wonder about the tortare though, and how it is for all of you.

How about you: Are you a tortoise, a hare, or a tortare (or do you prefer hortoise)? What's your experience with revising your manuscript versus writing it. Do you like writing or revising best? What things impact on the time you spend writing/revising?

Do you take breaks when you're revising?

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It's a long weekend where I live, and I've decided to take some time off my revisions. A huge step for me, as I've been working on the same document most days for what feels like forever now! And it's hardly taken that much arm-twisting from my critique partner either *grins*.

I guess that's made me wonder, how do you do it? Do you sit down for a solid chunk of time and finish all your revisions in one go? Do you have breaks between each revision-draft of your manuscript (and if so, for how long)? Does the whole revising process work better if you come back to a document fresh from some time at the beach/snow/wherever? Or does taking some time off actually break your train of thought, making it hard to get back into the manuscript when you start?

The same questions apply to drafting too, so drafters feel free to weigh-in :) I'm a huge fan of letting a first draft "rest" before you dive into revisions, but do you take breaks at other times as well?

When revising your manuscript seems too daunting (Part 2)

In yesterday's post I spoke about Step 1 of my Revision Plan of Action - printing out my manuscript and revising/editing on paper rather than on the computer screen. This gives you a completely different perspective on your manuscript and can help to break the dreaded revision-block. I loved reading everyone's comments, and it was really interesting to see the different revision methods that people use (revising all on the computer, revising all on paper, or combining the two).

Today I want to talk about another way to make your revisions seem less daunting: breaking your manuscript into sections. This works well for both computer revisions and paper revisions.

REVISION PLAN OF ACTION

Step 2 - break your manuscript into sections

I suspect that part of the cause of my revision-block was the 300 page manuscript in front of me. My thinking went something like this: How on earth am I ever going to get my revisions finished, OMG there's 300 pages!!! I was focusing on the size of the whole task ahead of me, rather than on what I could do that day, that week, or that month.

The funny thing is, I knew even as I sat there that I shouldn't be thinking this way. I just didn't know how to break myself out of the mindset.

Here's a little tip that might help you if you're ever in a similar position:

1. save your document into a new file (so you don't lose/delete your manuscript while you're cutting and pasting);
2. using the new document, cut a section out of the manuscript. I have 4 parts in my manuscript, so I cut out the whole of Part 1. But you may prefer to do this by chapters (eg 4 chapters), or pages (eg 30 pages). Whichever approach you take, I wouldn't go much higher than 50 pages in total;
3. create a new document and paste the section you cut from your manuscript into the new document. Save this under a label you can easily find (I called mine "Part 1 - From The Other Side");
4. Repeat until you have fully divided your manuscript into sections;
5. Close all the documents except the first (eg my Part 1).

Whether you print out the document or work by computer, you now have a very short document to work on. And it's amazing how quickly you can revise and edit a 30 or 40 or 50 page document when there aren't 250 plus pages waiting to be revised behind it. With me, this actually tricked my mind past my revision-block AND got me all psyched-up about revising again.

Once you're finished with the first document, simply move onto the second. Once you've finished them all and made the edits in your computer (as many rounds as necessary), simply copy the revised sections back into the one document. Then rinse and repeat as appropriate...

Obviously this may not work if you're still carrying out structural revisions, so it may be more appropriate to wait until your structure is in place and you're revising by scene or by chapter or working on line edits. But once you're in that place, give it a go, hopefully it will do the trick for you as well.

Have you ever tried anything similar? How does it work for you?

When revising your manuscript seems too daunting (Part 1)

I hit a wall in my revisions recently, a great big high one. I stared at my computer screen for hours, knowing I still had heaps of revisions left to do but not able to bring myself to continue. I tried to pass off my mental block as a one-off event, only to find myself in the exact same position the next day. And the next.

Eventually I admitted defeat, closed down my computer, and went for a walk. The change of scene worked wonders and I came up with a plan of action that has since helped me immensely. I thought I'd share it with you over the next few posts.

REVISION PLAN OF ACTION

Step 1 - Time to print out my document and start working on paper. 

Some of us prefer to do all our revisions on the computer. If this works well for you, that's great, there's no point trying to fix what ain't broke. But, if you're like me and find your focus narrowing to an area the size of your computer screen (minus the toolbars), and often tunnelling in until you can only concentrate on the sentence you're revising at that particular moment, you might need to print out your document and start working on paper.

I've found that the shift from computer screen to paper immediately broadens my perspective, enabling me to look at the manuscript/part/chapter/paragraph as a whole rather than revise sentence by sentence. This has obvious benefits to my manuscript, particularly when I'm focusing on "big picture" revisions rather than line edits.

When (or if) you make the shift from computer drafting and revisions to printed-out revisions is up to you. After I finished my first draft, I found I had a lot of scenes and paragraphs that needed moving around, and I did most of this on the computer. Once I had my manuscript structure in place though, revisions on paper became a must.

How about you, do you revise on the computer or on paper? When do you make the shift?

Next Revision Step: dividing your manuscript into sections...

What a Week (and a Contest Heads-up...)

It's been a big week and a half for me in the blogosphere. I've been keeping busy to avoid NaNo-envy (*grins*). Here are some of the things that have happened:

I entered Brenda Drake's Never-ending Scene (or cliffhanger--whatever) Blogfest, and was chosen as a semi-finalist for my entry. I received an honorable mention thanks to your votes, with the prize being a first 250-words critique from C.A. Marshall (woot!).

I interviewed Rachel Morgan, one of our Crusaders, for The Insider Scoop. It was wonderful getting to know her better.

We had a cool time with our Second Crusader Challenge, and congratulations go to The Weed (one of the newest Crusaders) for the winning entry. Well done for a seamless insertion of Kartofflepuffer into your post, plus the other random Challenge words! Look our for The Weed's Insider Scoop interview coming soon. And one of these days I'll manage to design that winner's badge, promise.

In my own entry in the Second Crusader Challenge, I revealed 13 things you may not know about me. Actually, I think I'm going to make an "About Me" page on Rach Writes..., so I'll be asking you what kind of things you want to know about me over the coming weeks.

Would you believe it, there are 49 Crusaders! Wow, so close to the big 5-0, and an amazing response considering I only started the Writers' Platform-Building Crusade at the end of September. I've had such a great time getting to know you all, and I'm looking forward to getting to know our newest Crusaders much better as well.

I went in the Second Logline Critique Session over at Miss Snark's First Victim, and received some fantastic feedback on my From The Other Side logline. That's in preparation for the Baker's Dozen Auction (more on that a little later).

Then I entered Steena Holmes's Logline Blogfest with my Evolution of a Logline post, had heaps of fun helping everyone with their loglines AND got some more fabulous feedback from all of you on my logline.


Thanks so much to Quinn over at Seeing, Dreaming...Writing for giving me The Versatile Blogger Award, and to J.C. Martin at J.C. Martin, Fighter Writer for my Beautiful Blogger Award. Squeeee!!!

What else...oh yes, I interviewed Hart Johnson for The Insider Scoop, and did my bit for the Naked World Domination Tour. It was great reading some of Hart's blogging tips as well!

And I did another Twitter Tip Thursday (ok, ok, it was on Saturday - will try to do better next week (*hangs head*))

Amongst all of that, some fantastic followers have come on board (*waves*). I can't wait to get to know you better, and I hope to get around and follow all those I've missed as soon as possible. Drop me a comment and say hi sometime, I love chatting with you all.

And, I'm taking a pick-axe to my manuscript with all the revising I'm doing (tee hee, I think V just got another idea - remind me to tell you about my "other" main character in From The Other Side some time... (*chortles*).

That's not to even mention all the busy-ness at home - I'll be moving cities in two months, and there's so much cleaning and throwing-out to do before then (ugh!). And my baby girl is only about a week off crawling, so I can see my life getting so much more hectic as I chase her around the house (aaargh!).

FYI, I've had so much fun playing with loglines this week that I've volunteered Rach Writes... for a re-critique for the 25 entrants who took part in the Second Logline Critique Session over at Miss Snark's First Victim. So don't be surprised if you see a lot of short posts from me this coming Thursday (watch out for mine, #4). I'll be posting more on that tomorrow...

So as to not leave you out of all the fun though, I'm having a little logline critique CONTEST all of my own, so make sure you check out tomorrow's post (woot!!!).

Phew, I think that pretty much takes care of everything, for now... What have you done this week? I hope it was something relaxing!

When is your Picture Book Manuscript Finished?

We had a fantastic discussion at Picture Books Only #pblitchat the other day about the book writing process ("From Idea to Polished Manuscript: How Do You Get There?"). One of the topics we covered had to do with knowing when your picture book manuscript is finished. In other words, when do you stop editing and send it out to agents and publishers?

Some of the useful tips I picked up were:

• it can take many, many revisions before a picture book is ready to send out
• keep copies of your old drafts in case you want to go back to them
  
• it is not just a case of writing a 500-word (or however many words) short piece of text and calling that a picture book. There's a particular craft involved in picture book writing that takes time and effort and attention to master
  
• you should always have someone else (and preferably more than one person) give a critique on your picture book manuscript. You need someone who can say - "Have you thought about this?" or "I'm not sure this part works"
  
• once you have edited your picture book manuscript and sent it out for critiques, take those comments on board and begin the re-editing process again
• some authors have revised a particular picture book manuscript 60 times before it is "finished"

One particular piece of advice which rang true to me was - read your manuscript through at least ten times, and if you don't change a single word, you'll know it's ready. A useful guideline, particularly if this process takes place after you have finished revisions suggested to you by critique partners AND if your final readings take place over a period of days/weeks, so you can come back to the picture book manuscript with fresh eyes in between.

In the end though, you'll know when it's ready! Trust your instinct, and remember there's nothing to say you can't come back to your picture book manuscript down the track and begin revisions again...