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I recently had someone ask how I tackle revisions and realized the writing process I posted years ago has evolved as I’ve grown more efficient. Honestly when you’re writing the first one or two books, I think one of things you’re also doing is defining your writing process. The process is something that improves over time, and I try to look it over every now and again to see if it needs any tweaking. While everyone’s will look different, if you’re starting from a blank page and looking for a starting point, here’s how mine goes.

(I’ve delineated the thought from the writing time that these steps takes because I’m a firm believer that writing is 90% thought and 10% writing it down, but it’s very difficult to measure the amount of time you think about something. And most people seem to hyper-fixate on the amount of writing time anyway. )

1.      Plot Seed: Plot idea strikes from the aether, and I write it down My latest one came from a microfiction piece I wrote for the NYC midnight writing challenge. The one before that was just a random hypothetically that popped into my head. Just make sure you write it down! The writing portion of this process takes about 30 seconds.

2.      Outline: The idea usually percolates in the brain space for a few days before I decide that I absolutely need to write it and type up the 1-page Save the Cat Outline. The writing portion of this takes about 30 minutes.

3.      Detailed Outline / Zero Draft: I write up a chapter-by-chapter outline. Sometimes this is more detailed than others. Sometimes it’s a summary of what happens in each chapter, and sometimes it reads like the screenplay (dialogue-only) version of the chapter outline which I sometimes refer to as a zero draft. The writing time varies widely as this chapter outline/zero draft can be anywhere from like 3,000-20,000 words, which is like 3-20 hours.

If I put more time here, the next step will be quicker. If I skimp on this part, the next step takes longer. Mostly, it depends on what other projects I have going on at the time as to how much time I put into this, and how fully I’ve thought about it. You could also break this into two steps, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever done it that way. In my most recent first drafts, I’ve just done a short chapter outline which probably took me about 3 hours.

4.     First Draft: In this draft I’m just telling the story to myself. Getting the bare bones of it down on paper and maintaining momentum. I cannot understate this enough – this sucker is literally unreadable by anyone else. It will have too many inconsistencies for the story to make sense, the setting details will be minimal, and I show it to no one. So, it will usually fall about 10-15k words short of whatever the final word count will be. That said it usually takes me about 1 hour per 1000 words, and I write shorter novels, so 70,000 is usually pretty normal for me. Let’s say 70 hours. If I budget 2000 words/day, which is doable for me, that’s 35 days of writing.

5.      First Revision: This is where I make it readable for my first reader, which, these days, is one of my long-term critique partners (who are also authors). It’s honestly pretty difficult for me to gage how long this takes. I think it takes about 2-3 weeks, which at 2 hours/day, is an average of 35 hours, which sounds about right. This is definitely the hardest revision.

6.      Second Revision: After I get it back from that first reader, I revise again. This one usually goes a lot faster, since I have specific advice from another author friend, and takes me about a week, so we’ll say about 14 hours. After that, it goes out to 2-3 first-round Beta Readers. These are trusted beta readers I’ve used multiple times, and who have read many of my stories. Most of them are authors, but I have one professional beta reader I’ve been using for a long time.

7.      Sanity-Check Revision: Finally, it goes out to second-round Beta Readers, who are 2-3 readers (not writers.) This is really just a sanity check to make sure the story works, but also usually results in some very small tweaks. Maybe like 4 hours.

8.      Industry Professional Revision: This is also where I send it to my Developmental Editor at Whimsical or my agent. They will both send me edits which can take varying amounts of time. I think we usually do at least two rounds which take about 1-2 weeks each. So probably about 24 hours.

9.      Post-Submission Revision: So far, I’ve only done this once, but if the book gets picked up by a publisher from submission, there will be another editor-led round of revision. I’m sure the amount of time this takes varies widely depending on the editor, but I’d estimate about 24 hours again.

10. Line Edits and Proofing: These are super quick they come as recommendations from the copyeditor and proofreader and are generally very straight forward. I’d say 2 hours each for a total of 4 hours.

So there it is: 178 hours, 30 min, and 30 seconds of my authorly writing time to get a book ready to publish. Since I do about 2 hours of writing a day, that’s about 90 days of work spread out across varying lengths of time depending on the speed of publishing and how many projects I’m working.

Please keep in mind that this does not include the publisher’s, agent, editor, critique partner, and beta reader time that also goes into. And it doesn’t include thinking time either. Which is just to say, it takes a lot of time for myself (and the people around me) to get a book ready for publication.

It’s funny, when I started this post, I thought it would show how much my process has been streamlined and simplified, but honestly looking at it, it reads more complicated than it feels. But that’s probably just because at this point, 20+ books in, I’m just very comfortable with it.

When that writer asked me about tips for revision, my biggest advice was to use CPs and Beta Readers to help you find where and how to revise because their objective eyes will save you tons of time. Also, I think when you’re first starting out, it’s easy to want to revise a book forever with the idea that it’ll never be good enough. But just remember, every revision will bring diminishing returns, and any growth you experience in writing this book, you will bring to the next book as well.

So as you write, give thought to your process, so that you know both when to sit down and begin, when you need another pair of eyes, and when it’s time to send that book baby out in the world and hope it flies!

Thanks for reading!