A Plea from the Revision Cave

So I received my editor’s revision letter–Round I. She kindly asked if I preferred to receive her notes electronically or on paper. I said, “Both, please.” It’s easier for me to work from an electronic document where I can do a search/find. But I also wanted that marked-up copy to show my students that even authors have to revise. Get a load of this puppy:

My 45-pound manuscript

As soon as I saw her revision letter in my inbox, I opened it and read through all of her comments in one go. I was prepared to like most of her suggestions, and question others. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s her, but I loved everything she had to say. Seriously. Is that normal?

I waited about 24 hours before diving in. Then I went through all of her comments in the margins and tweaked the little things. Oh, I was cruising right along! My “track changes” margins look pretty much like this most of the way through:

Whoa. That’s a whole lotta red.

Then I got to the bigger stuff. Not the the fix-the-existing parts stuff, but the create-new-parts stuff.

Can you hear that? The screeching tires? The screaming brakes? That would be me and my hey-this-isn’t-all-that-hard revisions coming to a halt. This is the part where I put scenes on cards with the number of pages per scene and take out a chapter that really didn’t fit because it was another character’s story, and it needs to be woven in elsewhere, but I can’t just take it out and leave a gaping hole because I have two main POV characters and my chapters alternate between the two, so I can’t just add new chapters willy nilly and expect the whole thing to fit together.

And this is why, at 2:30 this afternoon, I was still in my pajamas and my favorite fuzzy socks. Behold:

You know you want these socks.

Am I babbling?

Is my deadline for this round really Friday, April 1?

The answer to the above questions are:

1. Um, I’m afraid so.

2. OMG, yes!

While I’ve had deadlines before, I’ve never had a novel revision deadline. In the past, whenever I’ve hit the hard revisions, I’ve taken time–I’m talking months, in some cases–to mull things over.

So I am emerging from my revision cave to ask advice from anyone out there who has ever had to power-mull. Do you skip around the manuscript to stay fresh, or keep plugging away at one scene until you get it right? Do you step away from the computer and then–BAM! The perfect idea hits? Or is it BIC all the way? Increased doses of chocolate?

I’m open to anything–except for a change of socks.

Back to the revision cave…