Revision's Bitch

I was reading a Tweet by Joe Hill the other day, and he was bragging about revising his novella. . .for the FOURTH time.  I was so jealous! 

The truth is that there is nothing calm about the revision process because making some changes can be quite agonizing (do you merge these characters?  how do you part with lines you love, but know are cliche?), and if I weren't so busy, I would set my work aside and come back to it later.  I treat it like a new romance; you're too in love at first to be objective and see flaws, at least for me it is.  Also, my time is very limited, so I decided to start revising the novella, then move onto the novel.  Plus, I'm not the kind of writer that can work on multiple projects, at least not on the same day.  At least not right now.  Of course, I also said it would be impossible to get up before 5a.m. and write; I was wrong.

The other potential block is that I'm an English teacher and keep editing the damn story.  Ugh, it is such a pain.  So, to minimize that, I am going to cut up the sections of the story that have a time shift and read them separately.  It's like taking paragraphs apart, instead of seeing the whole essay.  I don't know if this will work, but we will see. 

I did make some minor plot corrections, but I won't be posting the story until I publish it for good:  The First Draft of "La Bruja del Barrio Loco".

Today, revise but keep your Kung Fu calm.  #Resist

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