Breathing New Life Into an Old Friend . . . uh, Manuscript

I have a love-hate relationship with revision.  The idea of tearing down something to build it back up even better, even stronger, thrills me.  It also terrifies me.  What if I rip it apart and instead of making it better, I kill it?  I've done it before.  I've sucked the heart and life out of many a story, out of many a manuscript.  How?  Why?

I'm not really sure.  It doesn't happen all the time, every time.  Sometimes I think I put too much pressure on myself to make it "perfect."  Sometimes I take every writing rule I've ever heard about, read about, or was taught and throw them at my poor pages until my story starts to look like a cowering animal in a cage.

But lately, the revision process hasn't felt so daunting.  I've pulled out a manuscript I had recently put away because the revision process had wrung me out.  I read the original over again.  Know what?  I liked it.  I really did.  Sure, there are holes in the plot as big as a house-swallowing-sinkhole.  Sure, there are overwritten passages, characters whose hair and eye color change within a chapter, and whole scenes that feel plopped in from another planet.  Know what?  I still like it.

I can feel the heart of it, beating beating beating.  I can hear the voices of the characters as they talk to each other, as they talk to me.  I'm taking the revision process more slowly, more carefully than I ever have before.  I can save this one.  I have to.  I will.       

A Journey vs a Short Trip

I think the year is still new enough to talk about goals and/or resolutions. I usually set up my writing goals in 6 month chunks - January to June, July to December.

My novel is the priority. The first draft is done (thank you, NaNoWriMo 2009!) but the long and daunting revision process is ahead. I'm approaching it differently than I have in the past - hopefully with more patience, if nothing else. Novel work often feels like a journey where I can't see the end. It's full of great scenery and amazing people but it also has bumps and turns and dead ends and roundabouts. It took me awhile to figure that out and to settle down into it.

However, I've learned that I also need shorter trips, weekend getaways, where the end is clearly marked. I need blog posts and flash fiction and contests with deadlines, themes and word count limits. I need to feel like I've accomplished something, start to finish.

Do any other writers - or anyone with a long, overhwhelming project in front of them - feel the same way? What works for you?