Catharsis and Enlightenment

Last night, I had a bit of a meltdown. I’m sure you can imagine what it sounded like: “Aw, my writing stinks! I’m a horrible writer and a horrible person! I’m ruining Bob, absolutely ruining him!”

Now, in my defense, I was tired, and I’m generally not my best when I’m putting together a revision outline. Honey Bear wisely told me to go to bed, and I did. And this morning, I had an epiphany: I’ve been doing this revision-outline thing all wrong.

In the past, I’ve organized my revision outlines by chapter. I’ve made a list of all the changes I want to make within each chapter and added a short list of general changes to the top of the outline. Then I’ve picked someplace to start (which is rarely the beginning), fixed that problem, and moved on to another item in my list (which is rarely the next one).

There’s no method to my madness--I just change whatever I feel like changing whenever I feel like changing it. I try to start with the biggest problems first and work through to the smallest ones, but that’s sometimes easier said than done. Last night, for example, as I was going back through my outline, I was getting bogged down in the little chapter-by-chapter issues and forgetting the big picture.

To put it another way (and to use yet another cliché), I was getting lost in the trees and losing sight of the forest.

The feedback our betas give us is invaluable, but if we want to make good use of it, we have to learn how to separate major issues from minor ones. I’m still relatively new to this whole beta-reader thing (Bob is the first manuscript I’ve written that anyone but Honey Bear and my mother has read), so I’m definitely still developing this skill myself. Last night was just one more lesson in the all-inclusive education Bob has been giving me.

All of this has been a really long way to say I’m going to try organizing my revision outlines by topic instead of by chapter. That way, I’ll be able to see at a glance the major issues I want to tackle. Then I’ll add bullet points under each of those big issues to flesh out the specific changes I plan to make. Hopefully, this will lead to less meltdowns.

Or maybe not:)

P.S. For more information about the revision process, check out Kayeleen Hamblin’s awesome post, “Pulling the Weeds.” Whether you’re a writer or a gardener (or both), you’ll appreciate her analogy.

P.P.S. Some of you may be wondering about my “Interview with an Agent” series. I’m still working on it, so no worries, but this spring has been tricky. Lots of agents are agreeing to do the interview, but they’re taking a bit longer to get back to me than they have in the past. This probably means they’re busy signing clients and making awesome deals, but I’ll keep plugging away!