author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

OK, so that bit about reading through once without a pen in hand? That went right out the window. Pages 1 through 47 are now rather ink-stained. I'll be surprised if I can read the scribbles later, knowing my handwriting; I'll probably be remembering more than reading, as the appearance of each note on each page reminds me what my brain was doing at the time I made the note. I don't have photographic memory, drat the luck, but I do seem to have a good head for associative recall.

Here's a true thing, for certain values of true: The first read-through, after a long wait, is the truest. The manuscript has sat on a Zip disk (a high-tech version of The Back of the Bottom Desk Drawer), unread, for more than a year now. Tonight I am reading it again with the freshest eye I can hope to bring to the work. If I weren't marking it up now, the things I'm noticing on this read-through might have never make it into my notes, because I might not have noticed them on a re-read.

I'm marking quick-fixes in the margins of the manuscript--typos and line-level errors that stand alone. Larger structural issues, such as the need to better develop a character's motivation or to convert a one-hit wonder detail into a recurring theme, go in a separate notebook. I'm also using the notebook to keep a running tally of what scenes I've written and what they contain. Hopefully the structural issues will inform a revision of the scene-by-scene outline, and then while I'm doing the type-in I'll be able to take care of the quickies on the fly. That's the plan, anyway.

Two hours down, 48 to go. Well, who knows how many left to go. 48 is enough to appease the NaNoEdMo Gods, but I'm betting it won't be enough to see this sucker publishable.

As a side note, Ms. Lisle says she can revise a 125K rough draft in one or two weeks. I expect that's at a higher rate than two hours per day. Gods know my attention span can't handle eight-hour devotion to a single project. When I worked a nine-to-fiver, I was forever switching back and forth between projects (ha! so it was a good thing that I always had three deadlines hanging over me at any one time?) and getting up for walks around the office, sometimes figuratively (visiting co-workers for a minute or two of gab) and sometimes literally (heading outside to circumambulate the building). I guess it's a good thing that I have two other projects to work on. But anyway, it occurs to me that before deciding to follow Holly's revision methods, I ought to read at least one of her novels and make sure her style and my tastes actually concur.

Reading, sadly, will have to wait until at least one of my three projects is done. I'm going to go away and whine now, thanks.