Thursday, September 3, 2009

More Thoughts on Getting Reacquainted with Your Manuscript—And Asparagus

 Asparagus With Bacon Yes that is an incredibly healthy looking picture for a Thursday morning on the Mystery Writing is Murder blog.  But hold your horses.  It does have bacon and nuts in it.  My thinking is that the vitamin benefits outweigh the fatty risks. :)  Check it out on Mystery Lovers' Kitchen.

And now…a report on day 1 of the getting reacquainted with my manuscript project. My grade for my revision technique yesterday is a C.

I had a really tough time not picking the manuscript to death. I’m wondering if the transition was tough because I just came OFF picking a manuscript to death.  But the difference between the two projects is huge—the Berkley project was something I’d been working on for months straight. It was time to pick it apart. This poor project has been on the backburner since April.  I should be reading it through quickly and getting a sense of the plot and characters again.

Very hard.

Today I’m going to approach it differently. I have several different ideas for the new approach:

  • Make content change notes on a separate Word document.
  • Highlight errors I find, instead of correcting them immediately.
  • If all else fails, print the document and see if that helps at all. 
  • Chant “I will not fix it.  I will not fix it.” until I make the first initial pass through the manuscript.

Wish me luck!