Time to grouse

By Holly Lisle

I’ve never written so much new material for a revision before in my life as I’m doing for The Wreck of Heaven. I’ve already done six new-from-scratch scenes that add an extra sixty pages to the manuscript. I’ve cut and rewritten and completely rethought two existing storylines, including the major one. I might have 20 pages so far out of the first 373 that have no marks on them at all — but certainly no more.

Damn, this is awful. Not the book — I like the book, love the story, and the revisions are making it even stronger. But I sat down today thinking, Yeah, I’ll finish this thing today and I’ll be able to start typing in the revisions tomorrow. But as of right now, just after ten p.m., I still have 148 manuscript pages to revise, and I know of at least one more complete new scene I’ll have to write.

My brain feels like pudding, and this revision reminds me of the staircase I created in Sympathy for the Devil, the one that keeps getting longer and longer until the person using it is precisely the right degree of late to get into the worst possible trouble. Feh! I want to get back to Midnight Rain already!

Well — bitchfest over. Onward.

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