Notes from the revision cave

If you know me in real life, one thing you’ll notice right away is that I am neat. Tidy. It’s quite possible that I’ve been passed down the neat and tidy gene from my mother, at whose house you can feel extremely safe eating food that has been dropped on the floor for more than five seconds. But you know what is not neat, or tidy, or orderly even when you really, really, really wish it could be?

Writing.

Man, writing is messy! And revision is even messier! I’m in the revision cave right now with two separate middle grade novels. And while I might make a logical, ordered list of the things that need work in my WIPs and try to tackle them one by one, the truth is that revision, well, it sort of looks more like this. (Can you read my scribbles? I mostly can, though I try to get them from the notebook into the computer on the same day in case I start to lose that ability.)

While my first drafts happen directly on the computer (in Scrivener) and I generally write chapters and scenes in order, revision is a totally different beast. More often than not, my revision epiphanies come when I am doing anything BUT writing. I’m out jogging in the rain and — blam — a piece of dialogue that’s perfect and solves a problem I know I need to handle just comes to me. Today, five separate small plot pieces/moments came to me during my five mile run. By the time I got back to my house, I was *this* close to having to create a mnemonic device to make sure I had them all memorized. I might have even told my cat to stop meowing as I literally ran inside to my notebook so I could get everything down before I forgot it all. (Sorry, Lilly!) Likewise, reading other middle grade novels also sends me running for my notebook. And the moments right before falling asleep are ripe for epiphanies. I’ve taken to leaving my notebook on the floor next to my bed just in case.

All of this is to say that creating too many rules for yourself or trying to force the way you work into someone else’s regimen . . . it’s just not worth it. If there’s one thing I’m coming around to, it’s that this messiness is okay. Even when I feel guilty for the right ideas not coming to me during my writing time, I know that my subconscious is at work, 24/7. And in the meantime, I just have to trust the process, in all its messy, glorious wonder.