Here’s a thing you learn as a novelist: stamina. Revising a novel is often a lengthy process and a real test of motivation and dedication. When you’ve gone as far as you can with your own edits, comments from beta readers and editors can derail you all over again. Sometimes they’re revelatory – you knew something wasn’t working but you hadn’t figured out what.
Editing a novel is a complex and unpredictable process, and often hair-tearing. But it’s so necessary because few books come straight out in perfect form. So we all develop our own systems for getting a book from flawed to presentable.
In this post at Writer Unboxed, Emilie-Noelle-Provost, who is currently in the revision throes, shares her revision methods and interviews four others (including me!) about how we do it. And although we’re all heading in the same direction, we have quite singular ways of getting there. Do come over.
There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.
Nail Your Novel 
I have been re-writing the first and second chapters of a new WIP which has the working title Second Time Around. Reading about the hook and the inciting event has been driving me mad. In the first draft I wrote the story as I wanted it to be. I always thought a story should begin at the beginning. The hook is at the very beginning. I’ve had to move the inciting event around a number of times. Lordy, this is time consuming, exhausting, and exasperating. Draft 1 had all the excitement of watching paint dry. The inciting event is now located on the fifth page. It’s not the way I imagined it would be, and I had to axe so much to make it work. This story reads better, its pacing is better, but its not what I imagined. One thing writers never talk about is vitamins. I need them.
Oh bless you, Tom! Perhaps we writers should talk more about how much we rework the opening scene!
Your instincts are serving you well.
Vitamin W to write. Vitamin T for typing. Vitamin S for structure, P1 is for Pinch point, P2 for pinch point 2…Vitamin F for finishing (Do not drive, or operate heavy machinery. May cause slight Buzz). I really want to construct this properly, just like a real book. But with the plotting, outlining, structuring, editing/and/or revising I need a break. But I also want to keep going. Maybe, just maybe I’ll actually write something worthwhile. Something people will actually want to want to read. But right now, I like someone on a construction site, with the blueprints in my back pocket, getting hourly revisions from the architect. Oy.
I’ve just half-finished a 2nd draft, ie. got to the end but without writing a few scenes I missed out in the 1st. So next it’s back to them. One problem I found completing an MS that began life in 2013 was that parts of the story were lost, even with a written outline. I thought I’d got them down on paper, so to speak, but maybe they had really just played out in my head. Very weird!
Our brains play funny tricks on us. Quick, write down whatever you can remember?