"Girls to the Front" revision blog: looking back at draft 2

What you're in for

• Why I am doing this
• The statistics
• What I did
• What I learned
• What I'm doing next

Why I am doing this

Last summer, I met my friend Amanda McCrina (author of Traitor, The Silent Unseen, and Tell Me No Lies) at a favorite old haunt, BFCAT to catch up. As we watched my kiddos run amuck, Amanda and I chatted about writing and our processes. But when she asked me about my revision process, I realized I didn't have one.

Girls to the Front is my second completed novel. The writing and revision process of my first complete novel, This Is How You Love, was chaotic. 

The original version of the book was called The Curses of Being a Side Dish, and it was completed in 2012, queried, and then drawered until 2017 when I started writing again. I rewrote what I had, wrote new material, got feedback on my synopsis from an editor through SCBWI, rewrote it again, sent it out to betas, revised based on that feedback, and started querying in 2021.

​I know I tried different revision advice and practices I gathered from podcasts, books, webinars, and seminars, but I didn’t document anything. I do know that I had a hard time wrapping my head around the advice I received. The advice felt vague and opaque, and I had a hard time creating actionable tasks from it.

Anyway, when I went to revise Girls to the Front, I had no idea what worked for me.
Luckily, my writing group inspired me to keep a writing journal this time around. My hope with this revision blog is to be transparent about what I do and learn through this revision so that I and other authors may find a revision process that works for them.
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So here’s your official welcome to the Girls to the Front revision blog.

The statistics

Many authors don’t readily reveal this information, and as an author navigating writing and revising (and really, the publishing world), this is something I'd like to know. Maybe my mind is more analytical than others. 

​Time
Start date: June 1, 2022
End date: October 25, 2022
Time it took to complete draft 2: 4 months, 3 weeks, 3 days*
*I didn’t write every day, but I’m not counting individual days, just total time.

​Words
First draft word count: 66,912
Second draft word count: 81,190
Words added: 14,278
Words deleted: 6,633
Goal word count: 75,000

What I did

June 1, 2022 – June 20, 2022
I reverse-outlined the first draft of Girls to the Front in an excel spreadsheet. The goal of this was to analyze the plots and subplots of the book away from the writing, which would help me find and fill gaps.

June 21, 2022 – August 1, 2022
I copy and pasted the reverse outline into a new excel spreadsheet, reworking the plot as I did so. I split the external plots, internal plots, and subplots into different columns so that I could analyze each plot line individually. The columns were: Agency plot, Church mini-plot, Ball mini-plot, Mom's MS mini plot, Friendship plot, Anxiety (internal) plot, and romance plot.

Around July 27, 2022, I started to become antsy and wanted to get back into the Scrivener draft.
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​August 1, 2022 – October 25, 2022
I worked within Scrivener and excel to revise Girls to the Front. I started struggling with the outline and arrangement of scenes and chapters around Chapter 14. Around chapter 19, I started feeling like the pacing was off, and it bugged me enough that I create spreadsheets to start tracking topics, themes, and character appearances, chapter word counts, scene word counts, and scene counts per chapter. On October 22, 2022, I started to forego revision altogether and just complete tracking the charts. I also wrote a synopsis for each scene on the little notecards in Scrivener, which I compiled into an outline.

What I learned

I'm far too detailed in my reverse outlining. I think this is a result of how I was taught to write outlines for research papers in school. But being bogged down in detail makes it hard to see the big plot points.

I really liked seeing the plots separated out. At first, it allowed me to focus on one plot line at a time because I could hide columns. Soon, though, I got caught up in all the intertwining of plots and I kept unhiding columns. I think this is a result of my outline being too detailed. 

​So, I got easily distracted and this way to rework the plot broke down pretty fast. This may be a better pre-first-draft exercise for me.
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I have no idea what to do about my charts that tracked themes, characters, misc. topics, and word and scene counts. I think this will be revealed as work later.

What I'm doing next

My writing group raved about the book Intuitive Editing by Tiffany Yates Martin enough that I bought it sometime this year. But it sat on my shelf until early October when I got so frustrated with my current revision that I picked it up.
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And I was pleasantly surprised. It’s broken down into different types of edits: macroedits, microedits, line edits, and getting feedback. I only read the Introduction, Approaching the Edits, and Macroedits chapters (Character, Stakes, and Plot) so I didn’t get overwhelmed with information. It sparked revision ideas not only for Girls to the Front but also for This Is How You Love (which is stuck in yet another revision based on feedback I got). It includes some actionable, concrete exercises on revision. I’m going to work through the book, layer in some Slow Novel Lab exercises, and report what happens and what I learn.

One last note...