Guest Post - Perfectionism and Post-Its: Revising a novel with Julie Cohen - Writing Tips Oasis - A website dedicated to helping writers to write and publish books.

This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.

I will happily admit, when it comes to writing, I am a freaky perfectionist. Having been an English teacher for ten years probably doesn’t help me in this way. I need to feel that I have every sentence correct, every fact matching up, the whole thing the best I can make it, before I show my work to anyone else. The mere thought of someone seeing my imperfect, messy first drafts brings me out in hives. One time a copy editor rang me (while I was on holiday) and mentioned that I’d said it was Wednesday in my manuscript when it was clear from the context that it was Tuesday. I nearly died of embarrassment.

You’d think, with this obsession, I would write slowly, double-checking every comma. But I figured out a long time ago that if I were to indulge my inner perfectionist while I was writing a first draft, I would never get past page 26 or so. So I’ve developed the strategy of writing my first drafts just for me. I write them as quickly as I can, about 7000 to 10,000 words per week, and if something is wrong, I rarely change it. I just keep on going. If I need to research something, I put an “XXX” in the margin and move on.

The outcome of this is usually a first draft which is a total mess. So I go through a process of neatening, straightening, and polishing before I show the book to anyone else. Usually I make a list of revisions I know I have to do, right away—things that have changed from the beginning of the book as I’ve written them. For example, in GETTING AWAY WITH IT, I eliminated a character, changed the geography of the setting, and gave my heroine a pilot’s licence. Then I print out the whole manuscript and read it through, making notes and making text-level changes on the page to type in later.

Then it starts getting satisfyingly picky and perfectionist. I get the Post-It notes out. I don’t plan my novels beforehand, but I find it extremely useful to map out my story after I’ve written it. A visual map gives me an instant view of whether I’ve balanced the different story threads, whether I’ve structured the book correctly, whether I’ve developed my character arcs enough. I write a quick summary Post-It for each thing that happens in the book, using different colours for different story strands. I put them on paper in chronological order, and I get a lovely, useful Post-It plan:

At a glance I can see where I’m missing scenes, or where I’ve repeated myself. My Post-It plan becomes my road map for revising my book so that it makes sense. (I lost my last one a couple of weeks ago, mid-revision, and I was hyperventilating. Fortunately I found it behind the printer.) It’s also very handy for writing a synopsis, which I usually do after I’ve written my book whenever possible.

I’ve become addicted to the Post-Its. I made all my students do them on the last course I taught. (There’s a video of me going on about it here.)

I also print out a calendar and plot each event on it. This is really useful when you’ve got several different stories going on at once, which you have to plot against something that has a definite time arc—for example, a pregnancy or a summer holiday. This sort of thing makes my brain explode, but it’s worth it to avoid those humiliating phone calls from the copy editor.

Then I polish like mad, adding in research and smoothing out my prose. And give in the book. And sit back and chew my fingernails to stubs.