Revising Drudgery

I've been stuck in a bit of a rut these past few weeks when it comes to revising.  When I did the first read through of my novel, I printed it up so I could make notes in the margins and I read it out loud while nursing Kal'El.  That was a great way to get back into it after months of focusing on stories.  None of my first edits were permanent (which is good because I've rejected some of them) and it also gave me a great way to combine working on my novel with doing something else.

Then I began actual revisions...or at least entering in the ones I made on paper during my first reading.  I realized that I needed to work backwards because otherwise my page number references--and the entire landscape of the story--would change before I made it more than ten pages in, making it that much more difficult to find where I was supposed to be.  So that's what I've been doing lately:  entering revisions into my novel backwards.  And I'm bored.

I think this is partly because I've already made these revisions so I'm not actively doing as much, but mostly because of the reverse order.  I'm not getting a sense of the novel's plot as I spottily work through it in the wrong order, so I'm not even getting involved in my own story.  As a result, I've been highly distractable and have stopped several times to work on short stories for a few days.  I'm somewhat torn on whether I should be allowing myself to deviate.  On the one hand, stories almost always flow best from me when the ideas are fresh, and many ideas are fresh right now.   On the other, if I get too distracted from my novel, I may never finish it.

The good news is that I'm nearly done with my first pass edits.  Soon I will be able to make more macro edits, do more research and add in several details that I glossed over on the first draft, and go through it in the right order again.  Soon.  And I'm hoping that will hold my attention much more readily, because I don't want working on this novel to be a chore.

I want to enjoy my work, the way I sometimes usually do, because it's the best work in the world.