Revising by hand

So I finally finished writing the sucker. It took over a month just to do the last chapter, but it's done. But revisions... aye yi yi.

I have no idea how revise my work. I mean, I've read about it, and I have experience revising and editing countless newspaper and magazine articles that I wrote. But when it comes to an entire novel, I don't know what'll work best for me. I spent a lot of time on each chapter in an effort to nail things on the first bite and avoid a lengthy revision process. And on the whole it received positive reviews in my writer's group, so I'm hesitant to make too many changes to it.

But I have to do something with it, this I know. And I know myself, too. If I see a snag in the yarn, I could start unwinding the whole damn sweater. And I want to avoid entire rewrites if at all possible.

So I came up with an strategy that I think will fit my particular working style, and I'm gonna see if it works. I got the whole dang thing together and shrunk the text, eliminated the double spaces, and left a wide column on the right side of every page. I printed it out, using one side of the paper only. Then I bought a three-ring hole punch (can't seem to locate the old one) and a cheap binder.

The idea is to do line edits by pen, and use the right side column to make any extra notations or replacement text, and the backside of each page, if needed. And I'll just carry around the binder until I'm done. It's a little crazy, but considering I wrote almost the entire first draft by hand before typing it up, I figure there's no sense jumping off the ink-and-paper train now.

My only fear is that the novel is rather short, at least compared to what I understand is the recommended length for first time novelists. After researching the lengths of some other famous novels, I found it's still longer than both Fahrenheit 451 and Slaughterhouse Five, so I don't feel too bad about it. What I care most about is how it fits together as a whole.

Then again, the primary goal behind writing the novel was to simply see if I could do it. In the process, I learned how. Ain't no different with revisions, I guess.