I’m at that point in How to Revise Your Novel where we sit down with the manuscript and, tools at hand and preparation done, actually cut our manuscript. This is the one-pass revision where I take my novel from the place it is to the place I want it to be.

And that’s a terrifying concept. What if I get it wrong? What if all this lead-up just means failure? What if I make the wrong changes?

Then I think… they’re just words. I’m not physically deleting or throwing anything out, and once I do the type-in I’ll save everything in a new document.

I have my snacks, drinks, blank pages, pens, scissors & tape, worksheets from several months of analysis and prep work. Now all I need is to get over the hurdle of *doing* the revision.

A few weeks from now, I hope to have a fully revised copy of my NaNoWriMo novel from 2007.

Then I’ll do the query, synopsis, etc., and send them out the door. I don’t have high hopes for this one, since I think the market for it is in a very low point, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on it — instead, I’ll think of this revision/query process as a “practice” run.

If I don’t get any bites on it and the market for it picks up in a few years, I’ll do a second pass.

So that’s the plan! Much easier said than done, that’s for darn sure. But learning to revise properly and figuring out where my own weak spots are has been worth every penny I paid for the course…

But here’s where it all comes together and we find out if I can practice what I’ve learned.

Revisions, Day One… go!

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How do you approach the editing/revision process: do you do analysis/prep work first, or do you dive on in and just start cutting?