A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. I led a workshop last night. What is always interesting to me is how workshop stories seem to have the same few problems. Stories lack stakes, lack change, lack desire. I feel as if these are all part of the same issue.…

A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. We’re moving into the last week of Revision Month, and with that the last week I’d given myself for this latest novel revision. That deadline is just not going to happen, at this point. I’ll have to extend it, but Revision Month…

A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. But just because we talk to ourselves doesn’t mean we know how to listen. I have this sneaking suspicion that writers who say “listen to your gut” mean only when something is wrong or when something is just right. That’s when I…

A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. Two thoughts: 1. I searched through about 30 books yesterday looking at their beginnings. In the meantime, I realized I had lost another copy of The Great Gatsby. Why is it always our favorite books that go missing, or are those the…

A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. Now on to Part II of our revision month. I had to take a temporary break from the internet to go to a wedding and the zoo. Life with baby. The interruptions of the real world. Over the weekend, I got some…

A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. I’m curious, of course, about how we teach revision and how our teaching affects our own writing method. I often see interviews where writers are asked how editing has affected their writing, but I find far fewer interviewers asking about the effects…

A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. I think I have figured out a workable solution to my problem with the section that was in the wrong place. Part of it has to do with the novel as a kind of web, the way that each part can hopefully…

A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. I, like the wise and wonderful Stacey Swann, whose editing tips are included below, have always courted organization. Though I am far less successful in my daily life than I wish to be in my writing, my mind has always worked analytically,…

A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. Revision as sports movie, as cleared-out room, as changing lenses, as — as in today’s essay by Cam Terwilliger — ballet. Will we ever get enough of metaphors? Below, Terwilliger talks about some of what I was trying to talk about yesterday,…

A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. We start out today with an essay by Kate Racculia, author of This Must Be the Place. The Uglier the Ugly Stage My ninth grade art teacher, Mr. Nick Todisco, gave me the single best piece of writing advice I ever heard,…

A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. To celebrate our Independence (from first drafts), I’ve compiled 20 or so snippets on revision from some really wonderful writers. Due to my own lacks, most of the thoughts are on fiction, though I promise we’ll hear from a few other poets…

A linked list of all posts from Revision Month can be found here. When I asked writers to chime in with their revision thoughts, I also asked some of The Good Men Project fiction authors to say something about how much I bothered them by making them revise/edit their stories. Only the super-honest Mike Meginnis…