Five Signs You Are Revising A Manuscript . . .

[tracy_d74]

5. Your characters rally, infiltrate your dreams and lobby for the dialogue they think will work.

4. You refuse to say your child’s name (Kenly) because ALL words ending in -ly are considered enemies of the state.

3. You call the police and report a crime: someone keeps eating all your cake and chocolate in the middle of the night. (Never mind you

Comments

[paulwoodlin]

Speaking as a defender of the occasional adverb, I still thought #4 was the funniest.

I know I'm revising because there's a red pen in my hand, I allow music playing to have words in them, I'm making a list of proper nouns to make sure I'm spelling people's names consistently (hey, it's SF&F after all), and I'm painting the white rooms.

[tracy_d74]

I think adverbs are fine to use sometimes. And frankly, sometimes thinking up a stronger verb means picking a word so obscure it sounds more weird than just using the adverb.

Oh, you use a red pen. I'm a purple or pink pen editor.

[paulwoodlin]

I've been thinking about going multi-color myself. Thing is, I'm waiting to hear back from a possible agent, and I'm sure she'll have ideas. Since my last dash with a red ink didn't make fundamental changes, any changes she wants I could mark with a different color.

[tracy_d74]

that is great about waiting to hear back from an agent. whooohooo! i'm sure you'll post the good news.

[misha_mcg]

Hahha, nice.

My way I know I'm revising is I begin to absolute hate the book and think there's no way I can save this sinking ship.

[tracy_d74]

Ah! I know all about the, WTH was I thinking when I wrote this. I must say, this go round, I don't have that feeling. I do have the feeling that I will be doing draft after draft after draft before I get it right and then it will ultimately end up in the proverbial writing trunk. But at the end of the day, I will be a better writer than I was on draft 1, so it is not a total time suck.

[misha_mcg]

That's what it's all about man.