Logically, I know I should walk away and not worry as they will happen. But that is the other problem, I have a time limit on this. I had a bright idea that I would do the rewrites over the Christmas break and then do the huge pile of marking and planning for next semester. So each day I can't write just seems to add to the pressure.
Whoever said writing a novel was easy were partly right. Getting the first draft was hard work but achievable but then doing the rewrites....well...what can I say! Almost impossible, which of course is rubbish as there wouldn't be any books published if people never managed the rewrites so I just need to get on with it.
If you have any thoughts or approaches to rewrites I would love to hear them and maybe then I can defrost this icicle and get on with doing what I want to do and that is to make this story a special one.
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I found it easier to do it on a hard, paper copy first, otherwise I was in danger of tweaking things and forgetting why they were there. Then you could set a timer for one hour, work from the beginning of the manuscript, marking up smaller changes on the text itself but also having a notepad for things you're not sure about changing straight away, but might come back to. After one hour take a break. If you can, do another hour. Then take a break and do your teaching work for a bit. The size of the task is what is so daunting, so break it up. The other problem is doing the same work in the same place. I know you don't have a lot of options of alternative work spaces, but at least completely pack away one bit of work when you're working on the other, so you can't see it and let your mind wander across to it. Count to three, take a deep breath and plunge in. The water's lovely! Hx
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