Revising Journey

Time Spent: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

I spent all my time today revising "Journey." No seriously, I did. Two and a half hours of revisions. Holy cow.

I've mentioned before that I'm not terribly good with revisions. I edit as I write, which is probably a huge time waster, but I like to blame it on my slightly type-A personality. It drives me nuts as I do it, but I do it anyway. This makes it more difficult for me to do revisions because I figure that what I've already written is good enough.

Wrong. That's why waiting awhile to revise has become a great tool for me. I wrote a few days ago in a self-evaluation that this allows me to look at what I've written with fresh eyes that aren't sick to death of the subject matter. And it's been only recently that I learned this.

I'll admit it - I went into this AST absolutely dreading doing revisions. I didn't think I was up to it. I'm still not sure that I am, but having done three now (and the first two were so short that they really just needed polishing), I feel a little better about the whole thing. After having spent most of my time Monday with pen to paper making changes on the graded hard copy, it was much easier to sit down at the computer and makes changes. I even re-wrote the ending. My creative writing instructor said that the ending moved too fast; for the type of story it is, I think I agree. But as the final draft of this story was due eight days before I gave birth to my son, I'm cutting myself some major slack, ha. All told, the revised version of "journey" has another four pages of prose tacked on to it. I've changed some obviously very telling parts to what I hope are parts that show instead. I've changed names. I've done research and added details where appropriate. It's been fun. It's challenged me.

"Journey" is one of my favorite stories I've written, I think because of the setting (which was the point of the assignment). I'm really glad that I gave it time to sit around before revising it, because I think I've made it an even better story. I'll be looking for journals to submit it to in the next few days - time will tell if I'm right or not.