Everyone who writes needs to revise sooner or later. Well, actually—it would be better if he or she waited until the draft was at the end. I even tried finding out ways to rewrite the last draft of my novel as soon as I completed it. I kept getting stuck.
I read pretty much every relevant article and even asked for help on a certain forum online. Everybody who responded to the thread said that I should give myself more time.
And they were right. While I successfully made a list of ideas for my next draft, I couldn’t actually start writing the next draft until recently. So, no writer had exaggerated about that. You do need to give yourself some time away from your WIP. Many writing experts suggest at least a month or two—often times, even more. But I didn’t really have several months.
I was going to submit the WIP to a certain editor, but I had to have that delayed due to just starting a new draft.
All right, maybe that’s enough backstory. I probably revise like most writers, although I often rewrite my stories long before I finish them. I try not to now, but I did before, because I was constantly getting bored with my writing. I started my current project four years ago, but for the first two years, I couldn’t finish a single draft. I would get bored by the tenth or eleventh chapter and give up. It was not until January 2018, that I discovered my actual writing process. That was when I could write an entire draft without quitting before it ended.
Now here’s a fun fact: I sometimes revise individual paragraphs. How? I wait a little, copy and paste that certain paragraph to another word doc, rewrite it there, and then copy and paste it to the main document.
Revision processes differ from person to person. So, you might revise in a way that wouldn’t necessarily work for me.
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