Revising, editing and planning for revising/editing your memoir can be maddening, especially if you’re working on your own. Book-length projects are an exercise in patience on a good day. Without support, it can be even tougher. So what’s the best way to approach the revising and editing process? Start by clarifying your expectations. I find that we often we expect the process to be more straight-forward than it is. One or two drafts, we think, and poof, we’ll be done. But the best books pass through multiple revisions, with plenty of outside support. Very few folks write stellar books in a vacuum. So let’s break the writing process down. For most of us, the writing process falls into three stages: Messy first draft Revising Micro-Editing Messy First Draft (a.k.a. Shitty First Draft) This is your early draft, when you’re getting the story down […]
Revising and Editing Your Memoir
