Revising Highs

I am currently on a revising high after being in an editing low. Rather than simply looking for typos and oddly worded sentences, I’ve been rewriting chapters, adding new scenes, and moving chapters around within my current work in progress.

I’ve been having so much fun that I haven’t taken the time to blog about it. The last post that I was working on was entitled “Dissecting Your Baby, Otherwise Known as Editing” because that was how I felt about it at the time. Editing was painful and I hated it.

Then something changed. I started looking at the possibilities and started creating again rather than thinking about editing as cutting and destroying. The mentality shift happened while I was rewriting a chapter. Writing is incredibly fun for me, and all I needed was that creative surge to change my focus.

Revised, unedited, and newly written chapters

I think I’ve mentioned before that editing is not writing. Editing wasn’t fun for me because I didn’t see it as a creative outlet. I saw it as a jab at creativity because I had to think about my story commercially: will it keep readers interested, is there enough characterization, etcetera.

I hadn’t planned on doing revisions, but I was open to the idea. Now that I’ve started revising however, I can’t stop. I’m having way more fun with the editing part too and I’m even more excited now about sharing my story. It’s going to take some time before I get to that point though. I’m currently about halfway through the manuscript. When I finish, I plan to read the whole thing again to see how else it can be improved.

If you are going through an editing funk, check out my post on How to NOT Go Insane While Editing Your Novel, and stay positive. Hopefully it will turn into a fun adventure that you’ll enjoy.

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