Our YA Buccaneers Spring Boot Camp is underway, and this is the week we’re all assigned teams. I’m really looking forward to this, to getting to know some new writers, to challenging each other, and to making some serious progress with an older manuscript that needs to be pulled apart.
This weekend, I finished a HUGE revision process on a work I’m calling I ONCE WAS LOST. I feel good about this fact, and nervous all at the same time. It was a challenge like no other, and I hope it shows. I know I learned quite a bit doing this book, which is always the bigger picture for me when writing. If I’m not learning, what’s the point?
Revisions for me are a combination of old-school and new-school. I like to print the whole thing out when I’m done and go through it making notes on paper. Yes, actual paper. Then, I have the “Sticky Note” process, which is a nice mix of pretty blue post it notes to say what’s in the chapter, and what I think of as the EVIL pink sticky notes. Those tell me I have something big to work on, something that can’t be fixed with a few deletions. I hate the evil pink sticky notes, but they keep me honest.
Once I go through all of those, I go back and enter everything back into the computer. This helps me see other crazy things; I’m thinking of getting some “Grumpy Green” post-its for this part of the revision. (Yes, the Post It people are making a bundle off me.) Secretly, of course, I find it satisfying to see all of this paper with pink, blue and green sticky notes. It’s the culmination of months of work, and that means something.
If you’re interested in doing our Spring Writing Bootcamp, drop over to the YA Buccaneers wesbite to see what it’s all about. There are great prizes, too.
Now, I’m off to begin some major work on a book called ECHO CITY. Of course, I’ll make a quick stop at the stationary store first. Maybe I should just invest in some new highlighters and save a few trees.
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