HTRYN: Lesson 1 Accomplished

Because I haven't done too great a job working a consistent writing schedule into my life what with making the DDJ into a career, I decided to sign up for Holly Lisle's "How to Revise Your Novel" course. It's a six-month-long intense look at a finished draft and weekly lessons to take that steaming pile o' crap to the manuscript you wanted and that you can submit for publication without infinite tweaking. I've got three drafts that are truly good stories but are atrocities in their current condition and need significant work to get them out the door. I wanted a structure to accomplish that work and some help in pulling together all the various skills I've acquired and advice I've heard over the past decade of writing.

I just finished Lesson One. Seeing as how this class started Turkey Day weekend and, as I mentioned, the lessons are weekly...well, you can do the math. It was hard but good work (a line-by-line reading of the draft, without changing a damn thing and only noting where everything falls to pieces in several different areas). And I just started in to Lesson Two, which requires yet another line-by-line reading of the draft. I'm very very glad I chose to do this course on the 85-page novellette that I want to turn into a long novella or short novel instead of the 100,000-word novel I finished last year before I started my job. Mind you, I want to fix that novel, but I think I might've abandoned the course with the enormity of that task with this sort of intensity.

Tomorrow is really the last day of my vacation I have to make significant progress on the rest of the course lessons to date. Here's hoping I can complete Lesson Two.