How to Write Activist Literature – Eight – Revise the Manuscript
By Andy Heath
Now you have your manuscript completed. Congratulations! You have done something that most of the people who even dream of doing will never do. But you’re not finished. Not yet. But for the moment, put your manuscript away for at least 48 hours but no longer than one week. You want to come back to it with fresh eyes for the revision.
Now follow these instructions. You might want to make some revisions in the way you go about them, but follow them regardless.
Print your manuscript. Print all of it. Single sided, double spaced, just print it. Then pick a night that you can stay up all night revising. Both times I have finished a manuscript I took it to Waffle House at about 10:00 at night and sat there until about 6:00 in the morning revising. Take a red, green, purple, or other easy to see colored pen with you. Then start from the beginning.
You’re looking for errors in spelling and punctuation. You’re looking for big mistakes, again, gaps and things that don’t make sense. You’re making sure that each scene flows well. You’re making sure you’ve strung your words together well. You’re going to second guess your words and see if you can come up with a better choice. This is the time to do that.
Sit there all night if you have to, as this is your victory lap. You have finished your rough draft and are now making it wonderful. Don’t be afraid to sit on a word and think about it for several minutes. Give these words the careful thought that you wanted to give them when you were writing – but were self disciplined enough to ignore until now so you could actually finish your manuscript.
I would advise going out to an all night restaurant to do this. You can sit there and practically inject yourself with coffee to stay awake, but you’re less likely to be bothered at night. There are fewer people out. The only person that might ask you something will be a waitress or some nosy person that comes in. Just tell them what you are doing and then go back to work.
If you don’t know English grammar and punctuation very well, this is going to be a problem. I would still recommend that you go over your own manuscript to make sure that you’re happy with all the words you used and the sentence structures, though you might have to submit the manuscript to a proofreader. Let me put it this way; I plan to submit Preston to a proofreader and my knowledge of English grammar and syntax is very good, my mistakes in these posts notwithstanding.
At the end of the night, your pen will have bled all over your manuscript, and that is as it should be. Go home and go to bed. Then get up and make all your changes on the computer.
You’ll probably ask why you can’t just make the changes directly into the computer. I suppose you can, but I like to see the book in the same format that my readers will see it – on paper and not on screen. I feel like I see more that way. Then I can make the changes on the computer.
You might want to repeat this step once or twice – but no more than twice, or you’re just procrastinating. I say that because your book will never be perfect. I’m sorry, but it won’t. You’ll just have to let that go.
Step 8 is something you can do simultaneously with Step 9, as working on them together will probably save your sanity. Remember to put a limit on the amount of revision you do. That extra energy can be better used on other things, so don’t take it too far.
With that said, you’re ready to start querying agents and publishers, which is the topic of Step 9 coming in two days.
