The Grueling Revision Of Penitence and Disbelief

By Holly Lisle

He Who Punishes HubrisWhere revision is concerned, making the assumption that you have the process of knocking out an upcoming revision well in hand before you start in is an act of hubris that will be punished by the Manuscript God.

This I know, for I have walked through the Valley of What-The-FUCK-Was-I-Thinking many and many a time before, and have had my ass handed to me by simple black ink on white paper more times than I can count.

Knowing this, I like to think I have learned something from my previous revisions.

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But, you see, THIS revision was going to be a piece of cake. 22,000-word story, knew what I was writing when I was writing it, I’d knock the whole thing out on Friday, do the type-in on Saturday, give myself a well-deserved day off on Sunday, and be back in here bright-eyed and perky today.

Hubris.

Ouch.

So I am now clawing my way out of a three-day ordeal that left me battered, bloodied, and unrested, to face type-in today with much more to type in than I had anticipated, with both the addition of a shitload of new words to the story, and a significant addition of plot that I’m going to have to track back-brain as I work to keep out the stupid, and one item that I FORGOT to deal with in the write-in and that I must now remember to address during the type-in.

Odds are high that I will not be finished with this today.

Nothing else happens in my universe until this is done.

I have a ton of other things that MUST happen soon, but this must happen first.

Watch this space. Once this manuscript is done, a bunch of things are going to start rolling out very quickly.

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