I’ve been sort of out of the picture for a while, hiding in the low light of various underground Hollywood cafes, slaving away at piles of manuscript print outs with red ink -- phone off, glasses on, eyes bloodshot, and breathing erratic. Yes that time has come, the inescapable stage every writer looks forward to and then shuns away from with despair: THE REVISION.
This year to help me with this grueling process I decided to enlist the help of Holly Lisle (she doesn’t know me, but since I stalk authors I feel like I know her), and her extensive How to Revise Your Novel course. This course breaks the revision down into a step-by-step process that teaches you essentially how to transform a pathetic first draft into a polished manuscript ready for submission, in ONE epic revision. Starting this course was like beginning a journey on foot across a desert that at first seemed endless and barren, but as time went on, began to grow increasingly lush. Sure, a lot of energy, sweat, and tears were lost along the way, and if this had been a school class I would have failed all my other classes to keep up with the workload of this one, but now as I approach the last few lessons I realize how invaluable the course has been for me as a writer. I’ve discovered that all my previous self-taught methods of revising were completely wrong, and got me nowhere – kinda like that scene from The Phantom Tollbooth, where Milo attempts to move a pile of sand with a pair of tweezers.
I’ve had an extremely difficult time with this particular manuscript, which in theory should be a simple and charming children’s tale, but has come to stab me in the back as it is now mocking me with it’s happy façade and haunting my nightmares like a creepy laughing clown.
You know how evil children are always the scariest part of horror films because they should be so innocent? Well, that’s what my book’s starting to feel like. My characters smiling faces constantly laugh at my incompetence while I cringe away from them in terror. At least, that is what they used to do, until Holly taught me how to make them into actual human beings.
The most important thing about her course was learning what mistakes I had been making over and over again in years past, that now I will never repeat. Freed from these death weights, all my future manuscripts are going to seem like (insert favorite author here) wrote them in comparison with the crap I’ve been continually outputting. Ok, maybe not (favorite author) status, but at least better than what you’d expect from this crazed, kidlit-loving, socially awkward, nerd.
Eye’s and mind now wide open after having several epiphanies along the way, I am ready to pull out my scalpel and plunge into the final depths of my novel. I may occasionally come up for air, but knowing me, I’ll probably just hold my breath until I pass out, get resuscitated by a kind friend, and then have at it again until this bloody thing is done!
If you’ve seriously read this whole rant I feel sorry for you. Like me, you must have no life.
