[Writing Post] Revisionist Movement
All hail the power of deadlines, I turned in my Redheads of the Apocalypse revision before the deadline. I wish I could say it was done, but it’s not. This is just the first round of group revisions. We still have at least two more to go. But I think we’re well on track for our goals, so that would be while I’m a huge fan of deadlines. It makes me get things done.
Knowing this is an ongoing process, I’m just sticking with revisions in my other writing at the moment. I took a day “off” after sending in the ROTA section to reorganize myself. I’ve created some binders with stories that need work –some are finished and may need a bit of a polish; most are incomplete. They started strong, but I ended up distracted.
This is something I try to do on a regular basis – work on random works-in-progress. Especially when I’m busy. It lets me do SOMETHING while dealing with other scheduling issues–like a major deadline. I don’t necessarily want to start something new that I’m going to hate putting down or losing momentum on to deal with something that has to be done, but I need to keep doing something. That’s where these stories come into play.
This time, I’ve done binders. I have three binders going at the moment:
1) The really, really old (as in I’m kinda scared to read it to revise it old) complete novel that needs to be expanded some and not be quite at old–because it is a complete novel, and I should have more than THE ONE that’s out, you know… out.
2) The two incomplete novels. I’m doing an editing pass on what I’ve written before just to get back into the swing of the story so I can move forward with them. Because…well, I need to have more novels…
3) The short stories. This bind is divided into two parts: complete stories that might need polishing and reworking because they haven’t sold and incomplete stories that (obviously) need completing.
Now I have these projects in an easily usable/workable format, if I need to work off-site for whatever reason – I can grab a binder and go. It also makes my random work spaces in the house neater. The paper is…contained.
Why not just focus on one project? Mostly because I balk at the “SHOULDs” which is a bad thing. I need to focus–and I do, when I have to, but there are days where it’s just NOT WORKING. Kinda like the other day when I had a job interview–let’s say my focus? Kinda on other things. But I could read and make notes on a short story.
I can also have the paper copy in front of me for those times when I need to look away from the computer. It’s something else to focus the eyes on. Which also means something might get done when it might not otherwise. And that’s what I’m about this year–trying to get things done when I might not otherwise. I would say that it’s a good system, but it’s only a couple of days old. We’ll have to see what happens.