Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Revising--Letting Things Cook

Is that a good title for the day before Thanksgiving?

I finished the first draft of the novella...well, sort of. I doesn't really have an ending yet, and I know I'm going to be mad at myself when I go to revise it and get to the end to find a mess, but it's done for now. Thanksgiving and copy edits for The Naked King are coming. Time to put the novella aside.

This is actually the way I like to work. I try to finish a project with enough time before the due date to get some distance from it and then revise and polish. The thought of typing "The End" and hitting the send button in virtually one motion gives me hives. There are some writers who can do that, but I'm not one of them. Even when I think something is in pretty good shape, I realize I'm wrong about that when I go back in and start the polishing process. And having the copy edits for the King will be perfect to "clean my palette." (I haven't seen the King since January, but these are copy edits and it looks like I won't have a lot of time with them, so I will have to restrain myself and try not rewrite the book. I could probably revise until my editor yanked the manuscript from my grasping hands.)

The novella isn't due until January, but I have these copy edits, and my publisher has gotten very efficient at turning those into page proofs and zapping them back at me, and then there's the small matter of Christmas and family, so while I feel as if I'm in good shape, I don't feel like I have a lot of time to spare.

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