We all become a little insane at the end of the book. Can’t get it out of our heads. Can’t see the wood for the trees. There is an argument for believing that the entire process of writing a piece of fiction is simply a thinly controlled and highly internalised nervous breakdown designed, with a bit of luck, to produce something worthwhile at the end. Revision is the part of the game where you wake up and find yourselves strapped into the white jacket, staring around thinking: what next?
For the sake of your own well-being it’s best to aim for what audio and video people call ‘non-destructive editing’. In other words you should be able to hack away to your heart’s content knowing that if you go too far you can always get back to the original. Some word processors, Word notably, will let you track changes in a document so you can see what you’ve excised and restore it. This is a good idea in principle though I find it confusing frankly – you get a screen full of coloured type with lots of marks through it.
The simplest way to make sure you lose nothing is to copy your finished manuscript and work on it with a new name, say Book Version 1. (I still leave track changes turned on in case it’s useful.) Scrivener also has its handy snapshot feature which lets you keep a copy of a scene while you work on a new version. But mostly if something goes wrong, I return to the original and retrieve anything I’ve cut out.
When I approach a first revise I’m wearing an editor’s hat. In other words I’m trying to view the manuscript from the perspective of the professional who will one day see it in front of them and look for tell-tale signs of sloppiness such as mistakes, continuity issues and non sequiturs. I always do this revise on screen because it involves a fair bit of basic typing. Just set up your document in draft mode – you really don’t need to see headers and footers – and go through it line by line cutting out the verbiage, trying to spot mistakes and cleaning up ugly language. I’m not trying to do a serious polish at this stage. I’m not even terribly worried about logistical flaws. All I want to do is get a script that is as ‘clean as possible’. In other words I’m not rewriting in any serious fashion, I’m correcting, dealing with basic errors to get them out of the way so I can concentrate on the bigger picture at a later stage.
This is not a terribly difficult part of the revision process. You’re subediting your own copy and trying to rid it of glitches. But you’re probably feeling a little shell-shocked from having finished the thing at all, so a little light work is definitely welcome. I approach this first revise in a single, concentrated burst. I’m not trying to think my way deeply into the book at all. I’m just hoping to make the thing read properly, nothing more.
Working full time I will usually get through this phase in a week or ten days. After that it’s another pause for breath and then I put on another hat.