Something hit me last week when I was participating in ReviMo (a picture book revision challenge). When I signed up, I hoped to have a week free to devote to my rewrites. After all, when I committed to this, I didn’t have any deadlines.
Then my nonfiction writing class was scheduled. Yep. It started during the same week as ReviMo. I couldn’t very well play hooky when I’m the teacher, but it was only one more thing.
Certainly, I could do ReviMo and launch my class. No problem!
Then I landed an activity writing job. No way was I going to turn this down but that meant that ReviMo was now 1 of 3 things I had to get done in a single week.
One of three. How was that going to work out? Actually, pretty well.
- On the first day, I revised Prey vs Predator, pulling out two spreads I had added to please an editor. When she didn’t buy the ms., I left them in place in spite of the fact I didn’t like them. Now they’re gone and I replaced them with two new spreads.
- On day two, I edited the main body of Prey vs Predator. I found some repetitive language and weeded that out and I also cut. That may not sound like much but I cut 140 words from a 910 word main manuscript.
- On day three, I cut my 300 word back matter by 60 words. As a whole, the manuscript is now much strong.
- Day four brought out an astronomy manuscript, Sunrise to Sunset. I want to rewrite it as a cumulative text but kept getting lost in the details. I spent the day working them into a spreadsheet. I doing this, I saw that I had a gap and gather what I needed to fill it in.
- Day five, brought another day with Sunrise to Sunset, creating a whole new draft on index cards. This saw the creation of a chorus as well as the beginning of the cumulative effect.
Not bad for a week that was chock full of other work.
The lesson? I really don’t need a week with no other commitments to make worthwhile progress on a manuscript. Yes, sometimes a large span of time is necessary, but, more than anything, I just need to do it. Small time, long time, neither one will make a difference if I don’t sit down and write.
–SueBE
One Writer's Journey 