Revising on a Deadline

I apologize for the lack of posts this week, Squiders. My website (which, you might remember, went down at the beginning of October) has become quite the job between browbeating my host to fix it (like they promised in October), figuring out how to transfer it to a new host, and fixing everything else in between (I’m currently backing it up in case the transfer between hosts takes too long and the site gets eaten in the meantime. I should probably do a backup through wordpress also, argh.).

I have spent so much time fighting people on it that I feel like I’ve gotten nothing else done. Such a pain. The site is currently up, but the theme is broken and I am too tired to try and fix it at the moment.

So, let’s talk about revising. In an ideal world, your revision process probably looks something like this:

1. Write novel
2. Fix up major issues if you know of any
3. Give novel to beta readers/shop through critique group
4. Get comments from beta readers
5. Do major revision
6. Polish
7. Have someone proofread/copyedit
8. Do what you will with it (self-publish, submit, etc.)

Look how lovely and organized that looks. And it works well too, especially if you have all the time in the world to get your novel ready.

But then deadlines come in, like the one we had on our co-written novel. The good news is that the editor loves it. The bad news is that our editing/revision process looks something like this:

1. Write half the novel
2. Do preliminary edit on first half
3. Write second half
4. Flail about in a half-edit
5. Submit it to publishing editor (step 8 above, for those paying attention)
6. AT THE SAME TIME, give it to betas and co-writer’s critique group
7. Hopefully get all comments back at about the same time (Sunday, in this case) (hopefully)
8. Do major revision
9. Send to proofreader/copyeditor
10. Polish
11. Publish

Also, that major revision has to happen in a month, which should be interesting. I’ve never done one with someone else before. I have done a major revision in a month before, but on a much more polished draft. I don’t supposed anyone else has tips for co-editing?

Anyway, that’s my life at the moment, Squiders. Website woes. Looming edit. How are you? What are you up to? Anyone know if there’s a way to split Amazon revenue on a single product automatically?