Revising

A critical part of the writing process is the revision stage. It's not always the most fun part of writing, but it is vital to producing a polished finished product.

When I begin a writing project, I initially don't worry about such things as grammar, punctuation, or even readability. I focus strictly on getting my story down. Once that is accomplished, then comes the challenge of re-reading the piece over and over again. Where, at first, I am the creator, now I must become the editor.

Each time I go through the piece, I scrutinize it for different things. One time I may look at how the story flows, whether or not the plot makes sense, where the bottlenecks are, whether all the questions are answered. Another time I will focus on grammar, punctuation--and at this stage I must be very picky. Is there an extra space between two words? Are the ellipses handled correctly? That kind of thing.

Again, this can be quite--even very--tedious. But it is essential.

One of the last things I like to do is read the piece out loud. I catch a lot of errors that way.

That's where I am today on my newest junior fiction novel, Return of the Schmurthies. For several months now I've read through that book--dozens of times (and I'm not even joking)--revising and re-revising. Today, I will read it as my readers will read it--straight through. How sweet it is!