4 Things That Changed the Game for My Revisions
If you’ve been following along on TikTok, you’ll know that I recently finished my second round of revisions with my editor! Now, keep in mind that even before getting my book deal for THE ROSEWOOD HUNT, I did a LOT of edits. And I also did a lot of revisions on my previous books. So, revisions are by no means new turf for me!
And YET––
Truly, every round feels like I’m Bambi just finding my legs again. Each brings new challenges, tighter turnaround times, and more head games. What if I’m messing it up? What if I’m missing something important?
I’ve felt exceptionally spacey lately, so I knew I had to put some things in place to help get me through revisions. Here are four things I did that, in my opinion, totally changed the game!
Making a spreadsheet
My friend Kat Korpi introduced my writing group to what we have coined “The Kat Korpi Method.” It’s a way of plotting out your revisions using a spreadsheet. After brainstorming with my friend Rachel (who also has a book coming out in 2023, THE BOOK OF FADES), I used her adjusted version to go through my book chapter by chapter and figure out what was changing where. At first, this felt agonizing. When on deadline, each moment not actively revising feels like a waste of precious time. But taking the time to thoroughly outline my revisions made a huge difference and saved me time in the long run. It also helped give me a birdseye view of what chapters would likely be tougher than others, so I could properly budget my time.
2. Prioritizing writing
Before I dive into this one, I want to make it clear that it’s not like I didn’t prioritize writing before, or for my last deadline.
But I’ve always been the type of person who’s like, “I can write at any time of the day!” And usually, that ends up being nighttime. However, things come up at nighttime, or sometimes I’m too tired to write. Something that took a huge mental shift was giving myself a bit of grace to slack off in other departments of my life while on deadline. It’s really hard for me to break my routine, but I realized that most mornings, I can’t fit in all the things I usually like to do, like make breakfast and get ready and read and maybe work out or go for a walk, and write. And wrap it all up by nine in time to start work. So, a lot of other morning routine things had to take a back burner so I could prioritize meeting my deadline. That stunk and sometimes I felt kind of guilty, but also, I felt so much better at night knowing I’d already worked on my book that day and wasn’t saving it for the end of the day. Don’t get me wrong, often I’d still work on it at night. But prioritizing it early on gave me a little more freedom later.
3. Meal prepping
Okay, so this one actually has nothing to do with writing. And yet also, everything.
I’ll be the first to admit that meal prepping sounds like something that only people who have their shit together do, and despite whatever pretenses I exude, I don’t feel like that person most days. HOWEVER!!! I am a huge breakfast person. I’m miserable without starting my day with at least something. But since I was prioritizing writing in the mornings, I simply couldn’t find a way to also make breakfast. You might be like, “Mackenzie, just get up earlier?” It’s a valid thought, but I resorted to scheming up a work around instead.
Which resulted in batch-making my own breakfast sandwiches. Which, yes, I could have store-bought, but where’s the fun in that? It took less than an hour to do and now I have eight bacon, egg, and scallion biscuit sandwiches chilling in my freezer. 2 mins in the microwave and they’re good to go.
If you’re on deadline and find yourself too distracted to eat or not wanting to break for food, I definitely recommend trying to meal prep at least one meal. It actually did give me a moment of feeling as if my life was together, and that was worth it in and of itself.
4. Logging my time
During this round of revisions, one of the tabs of my spreadsheet doc was exclusively for logging how many minutes a day I was working on my book. At first, I just did this for fun. But then I realized how helpful it is to see my progress with a timestamp attached. Even on days when I felt like I did nothing, I still had my time log to prove I actually worked a lot. I downloaded a timer extension for my computer and turned it on whenever I was working. Here are the stats:
Total minutes worked over the course of 22 days: 3045. AKA, 50.75 hours!
Now, that’s definitely a little off given a forgot to record the last three days of my revisions, in which I was reading my book pretty much all day every day. So, I’d probably say my total revision time was closer to 60 hours, at least. That’s averaging roughly 2-3 hours a day, although really, some days were 30-minute stints, and others hours-long slogs. I really enjoyed keeping track and definitely plan on doing it again.
I hope if you’re getting ready to draft or revise, some of these tips might help you, regardless of if you’re on deadline or not! To stay updated with my debut experience, you can follow me on TikTok where I post a weekly debut diaries series. I’m also trying to be more active on Instagram (taking pretty pics is kind of fun??) and still hop on Twitter occasionally. Thanks for reading!
