by Alison Dasho
I am brain-fried today after a long daytrip to Chicago (congrats, Cousin Emma, on getting into Columbia! Hey Chicago friends, please be nice to my cousin!), so I'm just going to share two quick links about the value of revision.
The first I found via The Passive Voice blog, which, you guys, you have to be reading. It's fantastic. He linked to a post on David Farland's blog, about Farland's revision process:
There's a certain part of me that hates studying a piece of writing over and
over, but it's not until I've been through it a certain number of times that
I feel good about it. For me, that number is something like 5-7 times.
Now, are you wondering what revisions might look like? How much they might change the face of your manscript? I posted a two-page spread of revisions I've recently gotten back from an author over here, and you can see how she's putting a spit-shine on her prose and cutting unneccessary words.
And with that, I'm back to clicking little "accept change" checkmarks on this revised manuscript, then I'm going to work on an edit letter and judge some short story contest entries.
I love my job.
