Revision Race

How to jump back into old projects

I turned in a YA romance first draft, an Adult cozy fantasy and a YA sci-fi romp to my agent and now I have to finish a draft of a holiday romance. If you’re an avid romance reader tell me what you love about them. I think of them as cozy love bombs like hot chocolate on a cold day during a looooong break from work and school. I have about 44k of this book, but it’s been on the shelf for a good while and I remember that it had some plotting issues and needs a tight ending. So that means I need to jump back in and finish it this summer.

I like to use Trello.com for revisions and do my best to organize the things I can’t keep track of while I’m plotting. Here’s an example.

I list all the characters, place names, a short blurb or single sentence description of the work and if there’s a magic system I’ll list the rules for my world. While I’m reading to revise I might make small changes, but I might also list larger changes that I’ll need to address after I’ve done a full read.

The biggest thing for summer is to come up with daily goals and fight distractions. I do the bulk of my writing during the summer break because I’m not a full-time author. I’m aiming for five chapters revised today. I’ve got 44k of the project done but I know I wrote myself into a hole when I abandoned the project and got scared of writing the spicy scenes so we’ll see how confident I am in moving forward on that part. I need to get this done this summer though and there are only about four weeks left for me and most of that time will be spend driving kiddos around to various camps.

What’s playing the background? Lianne La Havas’ album, BLOOD. What do you like to listen to while you write?