When revising your manuscript seems too daunting (Part 2)

In yesterday's post I spoke about Step 1 of my Revision Plan of Action - printing out my manuscript and revising/editing on paper rather than on the computer screen. This gives you a completely different perspective on your manuscript and can help to break the dreaded revision-block. I loved reading everyone's comments, and it was really interesting to see the different revision methods that people use (revising all on the computer, revising all on paper, or combining the two).

Today I want to talk about another way to make your revisions seem less daunting: breaking your manuscript into sections. This works well for both computer revisions and paper revisions.

REVISION PLAN OF ACTION

Step 2 - break your manuscript into sections

I suspect that part of the cause of my revision-block was the 300 page manuscript in front of me. My thinking went something like this: How on earth am I ever going to get my revisions finished, OMG there's 300 pages!!! I was focusing on the size of the whole task ahead of me, rather than on what I could do that day, that week, or that month.

The funny thing is, I knew even as I sat there that I shouldn't be thinking this way. I just didn't know how to break myself out of the mindset.

Here's a little tip that might help you if you're ever in a similar position:

1. save your document into a new file (so you don't lose/delete your manuscript while you're cutting and pasting);
2. using the new document, cut a section out of the manuscript. I have 4 parts in my manuscript, so I cut out the whole of Part 1. But you may prefer to do this by chapters (eg 4 chapters), or pages (eg 30 pages). Whichever approach you take, I wouldn't go much higher than 50 pages in total;
3. create a new document and paste the section you cut from your manuscript into the new document. Save this under a label you can easily find (I called mine "Part 1 - From The Other Side");
4. Repeat until you have fully divided your manuscript into sections;
5. Close all the documents except the first (eg my Part 1).

Whether you print out the document or work by computer, you now have a very short document to work on. And it's amazing how quickly you can revise and edit a 30 or 40 or 50 page document when there aren't 250 plus pages waiting to be revised behind it. With me, this actually tricked my mind past my revision-block AND got me all psyched-up about revising again.

Once you're finished with the first document, simply move onto the second. Once you've finished them all and made the edits in your computer (as many rounds as necessary), simply copy the revised sections back into the one document. Then rinse and repeat as appropriate...

Obviously this may not work if you're still carrying out structural revisions, so it may be more appropriate to wait until your structure is in place and you're revising by scene or by chapter or working on line edits. But once you're in that place, give it a go, hopefully it will do the trick for you as well.

Have you ever tried anything similar? How does it work for you?

When revising your manuscript seems too daunting (Part 1)

I hit a wall in my revisions recently, a great big high one. I stared at my computer screen for hours, knowing I still had heaps of revisions left to do but not able to bring myself to continue. I tried to pass off my mental block as a one-off event, only to find myself in the exact same position the next day. And the next.

Eventually I admitted defeat, closed down my computer, and went for a walk. The change of scene worked wonders and I came up with a plan of action that has since helped me immensely. I thought I'd share it with you over the next few posts.

REVISION PLAN OF ACTION

Step 1 - Time to print out my document and start working on paper. 

Some of us prefer to do all our revisions on the computer. If this works well for you, that's great, there's no point trying to fix what ain't broke. But, if you're like me and find your focus narrowing to an area the size of your computer screen (minus the toolbars), and often tunnelling in until you can only concentrate on the sentence you're revising at that particular moment, you might need to print out your document and start working on paper.

I've found that the shift from computer screen to paper immediately broadens my perspective, enabling me to look at the manuscript/part/chapter/paragraph as a whole rather than revise sentence by sentence. This has obvious benefits to my manuscript, particularly when I'm focusing on "big picture" revisions rather than line edits.

When (or if) you make the shift from computer drafting and revisions to printed-out revisions is up to you. After I finished my first draft, I found I had a lot of scenes and paragraphs that needed moving around, and I did most of this on the computer. Once I had my manuscript structure in place though, revisions on paper became a must.

How about you, do you revise on the computer or on paper? When do you make the shift?

Next Revision Step: dividing your manuscript into sections...