The Depths of Revision

I don't think I've ever felt as much like a writer author as I have the last few days.

I'm not talking to publishers or "getting into the business" or any of that stuff. I'm not even doing anything that I haven't done before, actually.

All I'm doing is what teachers make you do all the time: revision. So what makes it different? Just the sheer amount of it. It's one thing to do NaNoWriMo (which is a really commendable feat in its own right), but something about taking the result of 2009's into its fourth draft... Maybe it's just a mood swing on my part, but I feel like doing this is really pushing my passion for writing back to the forefront of my life.

Half of it is that I'm doing this after having taken the time to really edit other people's work, and find out what I need to see in a story, what I like and where my standard is. As it turns out, my need to give the authors of my beta reading some really good critiquing has caused me to set the bar amazingly high. It's actually extremely easy to do this revision, if time-consuming, since it's plain that the last draft doesn't live up to my expectations. The fact that I offered it to an agent is laughable.

I haven't stopped beta reading, though. In fact, with this second manuscript, I've had the luck to find one with a lot of parallels to my own work. Might even make an entry about that sometime soon...