I had a wonderful break this week, even though I was missing Little Monster who was a couple hours away at Grandma's house. I started revising, and have learned a very important fact:
I hate it.
Seriously. You have to sit there and look at every little note or critique and think about whether you want to change something or not. Then you have to go in and figure out how to change it. Then you have to go in and actually do the changing.
It's very tedious, but it's gotta be done. The only good thing is that I *think* I'm making my manuscript a lot better. I started writing a it while ago, and I've learned a lot since then.
But dude, it takes
But I want to do it because I believe that everyone needs to do at least one revision. Probably more. I can't say how many everyone should do because everyone's writing styles are different. With me, it takes me a while to crank out a novel (I edit as I go...I know, I know, many of you would tell me to not worry about it but my brain literally does not let me knowingly write a bad sentence) (now, unknowingly writing bad sentences is a whole different thing...that's why we need crit partners and revisions) so I hope I won't have too many rounds of revisions.
So this brings me to a couple of
Last year was called "2010: The Year of Writing The First Novel and Taking Way Too Long To Finish But Also Starting A Blog and Meeting Awesome New Friends".
This year will be called "2011: The Year of Revisions, Queries and Hair Pulling"
At least, I hope I get that far. Not the hair pulling so much, but it's kinda of inevitable- with querying comes hair pulling. It's kinda like a deep fried chocolate covered oreo and nausea. You can't eat one of those suckers without getting sick. But you eat it anyway because you love the taste no matter what the outcome.
I'm not setting myself anything too lofty because if I don't make my goals I'll basically die a slow death, agonizing over the fact that I didn't meet them. I'll just get this thing polished and ready to go out. Easy Peasy right? Yeah...I'm not gonna jinx myself too much. Hey, if it doesn't happen, then it doesn't happen. I'm not going to cut corners just to make my goal within the year. This thing has to be perfect in my eyes. So I'll do whatever it takes to make it that way.
Just gotta work hard and put my mind to it. Like Jessie, Lisa and Kelly once sang: "Put your mind to it, Go for it...Get down and Break a Sweat". And that's exactly what I intend to do for 2011.
How about you all? What are you goals for 2011?
