12. Revisions

Happy new year! This week JJ and Kelly are back after a holiday hiatus, traveling through time with an episode recorded in 2015 about REVISION! Once again, apologies for the mouth-breathing: winter is a rough time for JJ’s sinuses.

Show Notes

You can browse all our Revisions posts at PubCrawl via the tag! (Check out our Resources page too.)

• So You Finished Your First Draft—Now What? by Jodi Meadows

• Tackling Revisions by Susan Dennard

• Intro to the Art of Revision: Part 1 and Part 2 by Kat Zhang

• Revision: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 by Jodi Meadows

• Correcting Problems with Pacing by Julie Eshbaugh

• Kill Your Darlings by Erin Bowman

• Revision for Pansters by JJ

Things we discussed in the episode:

• LET THE MANUSCRIPT REST. No seriously, put it aside for as long as you can.

• Have a clear vision for your work.

• Revision is different for everyone, but JJ works from the biggest issues to smallest, generally pacing.

• The skills needed to revise is mostly patience.

• "Kill your darlings"—keep all your beloved bits in an "Orphans" file.

  • Be wary of your emotional attachment to your initial version of your book, especially if the story is going in a different direction.

What We're Working On

• Kelly's been making paper snowflakes!

• JJ is procrastinating on writing her middle grade by writing other things in her middle grade universe.

What We're Reading

• The Immortals Quartet by Tamora Pierce

• The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

• The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff

• The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon

• Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George

• These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly

• Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

• A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

• The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

• Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Off-Menu Recommendations

• Writing Excuses podcast

• Still Hamilton, you guys

• Hilariously, we mentioned wanting Serial to come back, and then the day after we recorded, Sarah Koenig dropped the next season like she was the Beyoncé of the podcast world

That's all for this week! Next week we got back to our Publishing 101 series, this time with a more advanced course. Publishing 201, if you will. We'll be covering MONEY: advances, royalties, etc.