revision

So, after yesterday's critique, I once again find myself going back to page one and looking at my manuscript sentence by sentence... and making a LOT of changes. While I did this a lot in the beginning, for the past month or so I've tried to constrain myself to only reading the last complete chapter plus the one I'm working on before moving forward. The good news is, I really think I'm making some significant improvements. The bad news is, there is no forward momentum. Although not making much forward progress is very frustrating, it helps me to know that this is stuff that needs to be done, whether I do it now or at the end of the process. The good things about doing it now are that the critique and inspiration are still fresh in my mind and maybe, if I get into the habit now of writing the depth that I need, it will flow into my new stuff, too, which in turn won't need as much revision later. That's what I'm hoping for anyway. Maybe this is just my process. This is already the third or fourth layer of revision. I just don't want to get stuck in the trap of not moving ahead b/c I'm too wrapped up in revising. We'll see how it goes.