Today’s Revision Angst Fueled by Diet Cherry Coke
If you’ve been following me on Twitter or have seen my life via Facebook, you know the following things: I’m still unemployed, I’m still revising, and I’ve developed an unhealthy addiction to several Facebook games.
The first thing isn’t related to the last two things, though I’m using my unemployment-ness to my advantage. Example: A revision that would have taken me several months of nights only took a month and a half to complete. True, it could’ve taken less time if I didn’t play as many rounds of Tetris humanly possible, but revisions are hard.
Let me repeat: revisions are hard.
Now that I’ve completed revisions on my contemporary, it’s time for me to put my focus back on my urban fantasy. This is harder to do than I originally thought, partially because I’m approaching revision burnout. The other reason is shifting gears from one world to another is a challenge.
The thing that sucks is that I have to revise: the urban fantasy will not revise itself. Also, I’m one of the administrators and regional coordinators for NaNoEdMo; it would look horrible if I couldn’t complete fifty hours of revision. These factors don’t change the fact that I don’t know how to begin this revision.
How do you change revision gears from one project to another? I’m desperate for suggestions.
Does the second revision really need to be done right this moment? My suggestion would be to take a break (a day, two days, a week) to let your brain relax. It IS hard to shift gears, but at the same time it's not really much of a shift b/c it's the same process (revision), just different stories. Your "revision-brain" needs a breather. Read a book or write the first 10 pages of that thing you've been putting off to revise, just to give your brain a different type of task to do for a few days.
Glad to hear you are taking advantage of your time by revising. I'm not sure that I have advice on switching gears but I'd say keep with it. Each revision is different, each work is different so each process is going to be different.