Today I have started the revision process of my novel. It has been three months since I last worked with it and I find that this time away from it DOES make it easier to see it objectively. I am slaying my darlings left and right! In the next week or so, I hope to have sent the MS to the editor. It is an exciting time.
Congratulations on finishing the novel, and good luck on the revision process. The time away from it to let it breathe is absolutely critical, in my experience. I do, however, find that I can languish in the editing process for a long, long time. It's good that you have goals for getting it done. Best of luck to you. You've entered into the ranks of "those who have written." Your membership can never be revoked!
Congratulations! Just make sure you're not slaying so many of your darlings that you have nothing left but rotting corpses to submit. You have to save something that's good! The whole "kill your darlings" thing can be overdone. Don't wind up submitting garbage to your publisher just because you got overenthusiastic with your editing. Best of luck!
I hear you Minstrel! But I am not worried. I am mostly looking for extraneous words ('that') or the odd typo. Every now and again I find something that can be rewritten or removed, since it simply repeats something that went before. Thanks for the well wishes though. I will post again with an update on my progress sometime later....
This is critical. At the point of finishing you are far too immersed and close to the story. That time away lets you forget certain aspects and you can then attempt the read through with a more open mind. I have referenced it the other day, but I am a guitarist. I also record a lot, next week I am recording my single with Pete Maher who has worked with The Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, The Killers, Jack White to name a few. The process after recording is mixing and mastering. A good producer will never go onto the next stage the following day of recording. A week or sometimes a month will be given to detach from the piece, so that the mixing and mastering (editing and final draft) can be attacked with a creative mind and not a bias one. There could be an amazing solo that you loved in the recording process, but in regards to the whole song, it doesn't fit. If you didn't take time away, you would do whatever you could to make the solo fit, which isn't the right thing to do. It is exactly the same when writing, if you don't have that break, you might end up leaving in half a chapter that you think is the best you have written, but again, in terms of the story you are telling, it is to its detriment if it doesn't balance with what you have already written.
That sounds like a rather narrow range of review. Of course, the kind of review you do depends a lot on the nature of the story you are writing. But some other things I look for when reviewing include repeatedlty using certain phrases, overuse of certain pacing devices, filtering, anachronisms, unnecessary descriptions and dialogue and making certain that I do not resolve conflicts too quickly. I also find that reading through the entire work aloud at least once is extremely helpful. In addition to giving you a better sense of the flow of the prose, it also forces you to slow down, which in allows for a more thorough review of everything (I catch SPaG and formatting errors that I've missed in previous read-throughs). Is this your first attempt at publication? If so, allowing a week for review and revision might be cutting it a tad close. Best of luck.
Actually, it is this rework, then it goes off to the editor. Then, obviously further work as a result. I limited my description of stuff I am looking for because it would become a tediously long list otherwise. I don't intend to self publish this. At least, not this year.
