Woman of Letters

Revisions

What a nightmare fest. Clarion taught me how to revise, but now I see glaring errors in everything I’ve written previously. However, there is no possible way to revise it all! I’ve been in this state of indecision for a long time now, where I can either trunk stuff, revise it, or send it out. I don’t want to trunk my older stories. Despite their flaws, I still like them, and I’m sure somebody else will too. However, even when I narrow things down to my last ten (most promising = least rejected) stories, it’s still just way more time than I have. I’ve gotten to the point where I almost don’t see the point of writing new material, since new stories I wrote nine months ago are still languishing, waiting to be sent out. I just need to perform some hard-core triage, right now. Do some revisions, and then write at a much slower pace than I have been.

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  1. kellysarah

    Yep, I’m facing the same thing. JP Kelly had some advice for me just after Clarion – Revise a couple, write a couple new, repeat – DO NOT go home and work only on revising Clarion stories. I’ve been loosely on a revise 2, write 1 schedule ever since. After a new one is written, it then enters into the “to be revised” pile. I just finished revision of my 3rd Clarion story and I have 2 new written. He described it as exercising both the creative and edit/revision muscles of the mind. It’s working for me so far, I’m chipping away at the revisions pile and having the fun of writing new stuff too.

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