For me, the first revision pass is mostly about trying to read through the manuscript as much like a reader as possible.
To read in a matter of a couple of weeks what took me months to write. Of course, it’s never quite like a reader would, because:
- I already know how the story ends
- I am making at least some revisions as I go through, so it’s a lot slower than a reader would go through it.
Still, I am trying to go through it as quickly as I reasonably can, to get a feel for the pacing and find any little inconsistencies that crept in over the time it took to write the first draft.
In the case of WAR OF MAGIC, I’ve also been slowed down by trying to fill in some of the gaps I left in the first draft. Places, mainly, where I knew I needed something, but I just didn’t have a clear enough picture of it in my head. And didn’t want to halt progress on a first draft that had already taken longer than I expected to figure it out.
I’m roughly three-quarters through that first pass. I’ll still have some of the notes I left myself in the first draft–and a few I’ve made in the first round of revisions–to go back and deal with before it’s ready for my beta readers.
Still trying to aim for a September release, though it may be late September.
Meredith Mansfield, Author 