Nice word, isn’t it? Break it down: re-vision. When you first write something, you had an ititial vision of what it would be. Although usually I have a pretty limited idea of what I’m doing until I’ve done a large enough chunk to gain some perspective. In revision, you get to go back and look at things in a new light.
This is today’s topic because I’m working my way through the revisions for Love and Rockets. I find it very slow going compared to writing new pages, so I’ve broken the task into bite-sized chunks and set myself the goal of finishing one chapter per day. If I get more than that done, great. But if I’ve done my daily chapter, I’m free to call it quits and do something else.
Some people love revision and hate the blank page. I love revision because I want the story to be as good as it can be and it excites me to see how much better it can get, but I still find it very slow going. I’d choose the blank page any day!
The revisions for Love and Rockets are going to be well worth the effort. I have terrific editorial input and I can envision what the end result will be. It’s just the distance between here and the end that’s the killer. Hence, breaking the task down into small enough chunks that I don’t find it overwhelming, but big enough to get it done well within the time limit allowed.
Breaking tasks down is something you have to learn to do if you work with big projects. I’ve had the great advantage of learning project management in the course of my job history and it’s very useful to me as a writer. Setting reasonable goals means you don’t exhaust yourself by doing too much at once or procrastinate forever because the task seems to huge to ever finish. I’m happy when I have a particularly productive day and overshoot the goal, but if I do the minimum I’m still happy because it means I’m on schedule.
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