Revision Issues? Roll with the Changes

“So, if you're tired of the same old story, turn some pages….
Roll with the changes.”

Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon 

Revision can be a bear. It hurts to delete material on which you’ve contemplated long and hard. It's painstaking labor to search out that "just right" word or phrase. I know, if the delete button were an eraser and the screen merely paper, there'd be a hole the size on Montana in your screen.

However, every chapter, essay, novel, or love note you write can improved. The question becomes "Just how much revision is the right amount?" The key is to find the happy medium where you can objectively look at your work and say, “This is better. Any more would be too much. Any less would be too little.”

Writers can obsess incorrectly two ways when it comes to the revision process: 1) To the point where you won’t change a thing, or 2) To the point when you can’t stop changing things. You don't want to be the lazy ferret content to let the reader do your editing, nor do you want to be the person who can't stop finding new ways to say the same thing. John Howard Griffin commented at a writing workshop years ago that he never would have finished Black Like Me if his publisher hadn’t given him the instruction, “You’re done!”

Both habits are to be avoided, but how does one do that? The main way .... seriously ... is to simply relax, take a breath, maybe step away, and get a new perspective on your piece and life in general.

Now, I could get verbose and expound a few hundred more words on the subject, but I think it’s more important today to guide you to that upbeat attitude that simply shuts off the stressing brain and allows you to feel good. So I’m leaving you with a YouTube link to REO’s appearance on Midnight Special oh, so many years ago.

Crank the bass and volume. Step back from the keyboard and watch Cronin, Richrath, and company lift your spirits. Editorial changes will never agin feel quite so daunting.

And remember: "You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish.”