The revisions of my novel are progressing, albeit progressing slowly. I'm discovering that the often-very-short writing time I have each day makes novel revisions difficult. With such a big piece of work, there's more story to get back in the mode of, and just reminding myself of the atmosphere surrounding a necessary change can take up nearly all of my time. I finished with all of the edits I can make in a short, jump-in jump-out fashion, and that left me wondering what to do next.
Finally, I decided that the only way I was going to maintain the thread of the story for the remaining revisions was to go through the novel from beginning to end again. In order to keep track of what needs to be done as I go, I utilized the Comments feature in Word, converting my to-do list into comments placed approximately where they will need to go. Now I can (hopefully) make one big sweep and fix nearly everything as I go. If there's anything I think I'll need to do later, I'll be sure to leave a comment again so I can find it easily.
This big process ought to start tomorrow, unless I feel the need to tackle part of my monthly story goal first. I wish I could say it will happen fast, but I know it won't. I imagine I may get only get through one or two pages on some of the slower days. But if I manage to fix everything as I go through, it'll be ready for critiques from others by the time I'm done.
How about you? I've never edited a novel before--how do you usually tackle taking on such a large piece of work?
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