It happens every book and I'm not sure why. I print the story, I read through it, I mark it up and I completely forget how to revise. It's some weird amnesia because somehow on my other books I managed to find a way to fix things. And of course, it happened to me on this book too. I sat down on Saturday and I realized I don't know how to revise.
After the panic subsides, I decide to tackle it chapter by chapter starting from the beginning. It's logical. And somewhere along the way, it all comes back to me.
That was my weekend. I finished revising 7 chapters, which I didn't think was too bad considering I had to learn how all over again. Of course, these are the chapters that didn't need all that much work. About page 200, things are going to get much more labor intensive so I need to pick up the pace.
In the My Dad is so Funny Category: He bought an extender for my rain gutter because where the down spout was spitting out rain was no good. It was eroding the dirt under my driveway. He bought brown. Why? I have no clue. My house is tan, my trim is white. I saw it and the first thing I asked was, that's the only color they have? It wasn't. It came in white as well. He's not happy about the need to exchange it and clearly it's my fault that he chose brown. "I wish you would come with me," he said. I'm not quite sure why he needs me there. To tell him my house isn't brown? I kind of thought he knew that. ;-)
I sigh. I can't tell you how many times I've had to explain to him that I have deadlines over the past few months. So I said, Dad, I wish I could go with you too, but I can't right now. This is a total lie because I have no interest in picking out gutter extensions, but it made him happy, so it served its purpose. He stopped complaining. :-)
Then came installation. He's examining the spout and I'm standing there watching him. Whoo hoo. The excitement just never stops. It's a good thing I was there, though. He needed the extender to attach higher and he was going to CUT OFF MY SPOUT! Staying admirably calm at the thought of him wrecking my gutters, I suggested that he pull off the elbow spout that attached to the down spout rather than cutting it off. Amazing how well that worked. It got the thing he bought to the correct height and there was even a screw hole in the spout thing that matched the extender he bought.
I better hurry up and finish revising my book so I can supervise him more closely. Gah! I'm just glad this was a weekend project and not something he decided to do while I was at work.
