As promised, here is my post about my plans for 2022. As you can probably guess from the tittle, my main plan is to revise my manuscript. I am hoping that the publisher I sent three chapters to gets back to me and wants to publish the book. That would give focus and direction to my revision process.
For a lot of reasons December was not a very good month and I was not as productive as I hoped to be. That is however backward looking, and I am trying, for 2022 and beyond, to be in the present and do only a modest amount of planning for the future.
The structure of NaNoWriMo worked so well for completing the draft that I am going to try to adapt it for revising. On the site I pledged (adapted for non-fiction) to:
“edit and revise my manuscript. I swear to undertake the un-luxurious process of editing the first draft of my book. I understand that this process can be messy and disheartening, but ultimately just as rewarding as writing it all the first time.
I will augment the collection of creative implements (pens, pencils, keyboards, touchscreens, quills, and hunks of charcoal) at my workspace with destructive ones (erasers, backspace keys, white-out, and comically large mallets). I will refine and chop sentences, paragraphs, and chapters with impartial ferocity.
Above all, I promise to regard my book with a critical but not cruel eye, for it is a work of mine and deserves to be made even better.”
One of the best features of NaNoWriMo was the word counter, which I faithfully updated every day in November. Because when you are revising, you may work on different pages, paragraphs, or chapters in the same session, counting words could be difficult. I found a hack which is to translate minutes into number of words. My plan is to try to do revisions for three hours every day of January. That means my word total for the month would be 1800 words. My minimum standard is one hour.
I am not going to blog every day of January, but I will give you, my loyal readers, updates every Friday on my progress.
Happy New Year!