Learning to Revise/Edit

At the end of April, I finished FAERIE.  My intentions were to edit the story over the summer when my kidlet was out of school.

--it didn't happen.  Instead, I diddled around with the beginning of an old partial that I had put away, rewriting the first few chapters/synopsis from scratch. 

I've gotten about all the rejections I can handle with GNOME,  so I'm 'officially' retiring it from active querying.  It's time to move on.  And yes, I've been pimping GNOME for over a year.  Got some nibbles (partials and fulls), but no takers. *sigh*

So, I pull out my FAERIE query, make a few tweaks and send it to a few people.  I got some comments back, but I'm shelving the query for now.  Why?  Because I did a name change of my main character in FAERIE's first draft.  I skimmed the story when I was 'finding and replacing' and realized that I have a HUGE amount of work ahead of me--more than I thought or expected. I need to buckle down and get the manuscript into shape BEFORE I consider querying it.

Therefore, I'm changing into my EDIT hat and will dive into the story today.  The problem that I have, and will ALWAYS have, is that I tend to dink with the sentences and paragraphs each and every time I read them.  During the second draft  is NOT the time to do this.

On an aside: THIS is why I don't want someone to crit to this depth and request only general comments--slow pacing, unbelievable dialogue, or confusing sentence--you get the picture.  But it doesn't stop the majority of critters from trying to change the story into the way they would write it. 

If you are a critter, please, please, please, try to respect the writer's wishes and do the type of crit they request.  Writers, just like critters, have different strengths and weaknesses, along with different needs.  If you are unable to do that type of crit requested, then decline the request.

Here's my plan:
1) read the story all the way through without making changes--jot notes/comments throughout
2) make big picture corrections--this tends to involve little corrections, too
3) read the story again for pacing, characterization, dialogue, blah, blah, blah--adjusting spices as needed
4) find willing victim . . . oops, volunteers to sample finished story
5) scream/rant/rave about their comments as they 'ruin' the story
6) put on big girl panties to use the suggestions to improve my story
7) read the #$@#$ thing again.
8) lather, rinse, repeat as needed.

So--if you have another method, PLEASE tell me your method as I might be able to improve mine!

TTFN! 

Write on!