Episode Ten: Masterclass Replay - Revision Without Overwhelm: Learn the 4-step process to take your draft from messy to marvelous
In this episode, I’m sharing a partial replay of a masterclass I ran for writers called Revision Without Overwhelm: Learn the 4-step process to take your draft from messy to marvelous. In this class, I’m sharing 1) what really makes revision overwhelming, 2) the 4-steps to a successful revision, and 3) tips for managing your revision process so you can make your manuscript better without getting completely lost in the weeds.
If you’re listening to / watching this episode when it comes out, Reader Ready Revisions is officially open for enrollment until January 30th, 2026! You can learn more and enroll with the link below. Missed this session? No worries! Subscribe to my newsletter and be the first to know when the next session opens!
You can listen to the full epsiode here. Or, watch here.
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Transcript
Please Note: This is an automatically generated transcript that has not been edited.
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
Welcome to episode number 10 of the Better Writer podcast. For this episode, I'm sharing a replay of a free masterclass that I ran last week called Revision Without Overwhelm, Learn the 4-Step Process to Take Your Draft from Messy to Marvelous.
The class ended up being a lot of fun and everyone who attended said it was really helpful, so I thought I would share part of the recording with you here. So I hope you enjoy and learn something from this session. If you want to be able to see the slides from the session on your screen, go ahead and find this video on YouTube. I am at Olivia Helps Writers and you can find every episode of the Better Writer podcast with video there.
If you're not watching right now, go ahead, go to YouTube so you can see all of the slides or sit back, relax, and enjoy the audio, which I'm sure is still going to be super, super helpful either way.
This is revision without overwhelm, learn the four step process to take your draft from messy to marvelous. All right. And then over the next hour-ish, we might run a little short, a little long, we'll see.
I'm going show you how to take the overwhelm and confusion out of your revision process so you can make revisions easier, more efficient, and ultimately more effective. All right. In case we haven't met or worked together in the past, my name is Olivia. I am a developmental editor, and I am a certified fiction book coach. Before I started working with writers, though, I was a writer just like you, ⁓ trying to figure out what to do, of testing things out, trying them along the way. ⁓
Along that path, I discovered that I am much, better at analyzing other people's work and giving them feedback. ⁓ So I'm a decent writer, but I really, really come alive when I'm giving feedback and helping other writers. And that is how I became an editor, how I became a book coach. My mission now is to help fiction writers turn their messy drafts into stories that their future readers will love. I do that with my editing services. I do that in coaching. And I'm going to do that now over the next hour and in a new course that I'm going to talk about at the end.
Before we dive in, I think most people here are writing some form of genre fiction. So mystery, fantasy, science fiction, all that is under that same kind of umbrella of genre fiction. That is what I specialize in. So you are definitely in the right place. If you write something else, so if you write more literary fiction or maybe write memoir, other types of nonfiction, I think this particular session is going to be helpful for you. I'm talking more about the process overall. So I think that is definitely going to be relevant. However,
I'm going to talk a little bit about a course that I'm offering in the end. That is probably not going to be the best fit for you. It really is for genre fiction authors. So I just want to put that context in upfront. That is my specialty. Most of what I do is kind of focused on those genres in particular. So if you write something else, I hope you will get a lot of the session. But just keep in mind that it is not necessarily going to fit perfectly. And you might have to tweak and adjust to make it really fit your process and your genre. All right.
Okay, before we dive into the actual content, I just want to ask you to put away the phones, shut the million tabs that are probably open on your computer right now, and just really give yourself this next hour to focus on your writing, on this content, just so can all be present together. I know how tempting it is to multitask, but multitasking is a myth. So we'll try to shut out those distractions for now.
Okay, we are here to talk about revision. I just want to know which one of these describes you. So you can put it in the chat, whichever one of these resonates or multiple do. If you have ever struggled to revise something you're working on or if you have ever doubted whether the book you're working on is truly worth all the effort that you're putting in. And if you are someone who wants to write a great book, if you only knew how to do it.
Okay, so Paul's saying all three amazing, I am got, ooh, spiritual memoirs. That is, I actually just read an article about writing a spiritual memoir in Writers Digest. All right, anyone else wants to throw in the chat? Are you one of these people who has struggled to revise, who wants to write a great book, or if you have ever felt doubt? Okay, definitely question whether it's worthwhile is super valid. I think all of us have that point where like, why are we doing this? Who are we to think that we could write a book?
Okay, all right, so you can keep throwing that in the chat if you are in one of those categories right now with your current project. All right, page says struggling. All right, okay.
So whether or not one of those categories perfectly resonated with you, I'm guessing that you're here because you have a draft and no idea what to do with it. Or maybe you have finished a book before, but you want to make your revision process more efficient, more effective. Or maybe your revisions have totally stalled out and you just need help. You have no idea how to move forward. And that's why you're here. If it's any of those reasons, you are absolutely in the right place. And hopefully, this session is going to help you. All right.
Before we start off, I just want to say that I believe you can all write a great book. It may take time. It may take a lot of effort. Some of you may be further or closer to that goal, but I believe that it is possible. I believe that revision does not have to be miserable, and I believe that you can do this. That is why we're here. That is why we're here learning together. All right. So here is the plan for today. We are going to talk about what makes provision so overwhelming for so many writers.
Then we're going to talk about a four step process you can use to make those revisions more manageable and more efficient. Then we're going to talk about how I can help you with that process if you want me to. And we'll end with a Q &A session so you can ask any specific questions you have about revision going forward. All right. To start, why is revision overwhelming? I think it comes down to a few things that tend to get in the way of this process. First off, there are writers who try to do too much at once.
So they are trying to fix plot holes, analyze their characters, and fix all of their typos and comment issues, while they're also trying to discover their voice, give each character a unique voice, and trying to wrap it all up with perfect formatting, ready to be published as soon as they finish their draft. And that is just unrealistic. These are all separate parts of the process that need to be treated as such. And if we try to do everything all together, it's going to be totally overwhelming and we're not going to do it effectively. Then there's the writers who don't have a strategic approach to keep them on track. They're bouncing around through different classes, different resources. ⁓ They're trying, you know, different strategies all the time. They're trying to, you know, jump to chapter one and then chapter five and then the end and then trying to figure out and make it all come together. And it's just not working. And finally, there are people who try to the entire story in their head at once while they're revising. They are trying to memorize their entire plot so that they can revise it and, you know, trying to remember what's going to happen in Chapter 50 when they're working on Chapter 1, trying to keep this whole complex thing in their head just by looking at one section at a time. Then there are also people who think that they have to get everything right in one single round of revision. So there's definitely some overlap here with the people who doing too much at once, but I think this is more the emotional side of it, where they are so convinced that the second draft has to be perfect, that they don't start. They think that the first draft could be messy, but draft two is where it all has to come together. It all has to be flawless. And so they never really start revising or they never move forward because they're so terrified that the decision they make is going to be the wrong one. And so they just keep getting stuck in that same spot and never moving forward.
So here are just some specific examples of what that could look like on a more tangible level. It could be trying to read your first draft straight through and trying to assess plot level issues just by reading it through chapter by chapter, as opposed to trying to find a way to look at the whole thing more holistically. It could mean bouncing between story and scene and line level revisions throughout the process, never really finishing any one of them, but just switching back and forth all the time. It could also mean that you're revising as you go without stopping to assess your whole book revising chapter one in isolation, then chapter two, and then chapter three, and never really stopping to consider does chapter one lead into chapter two, into chapter three, and so on. Again, these are just a few examples of what this could look like. There are many, many different ways that revisions can go wrong, and they are as unique as the writers making the mistakes. Those are just some examples to make it more tangible for you. All right, so now we know what we are trying to avoid. What leads into that revision overwhelm? What are we supposed to do in step?
All right, that is where the reader ready revision method comes in. Essentially, I took my process as an editor, what I do to analyze and help analyze client work and help them revise and thought, how could I turn this into something that writers can use on their own? Because ⁓ it's not possible to have an editor in your pocket 24 seven. And a lot of this revision work really does need to happen. ⁓ The writer doing it themselves. It's not just about finding someone to help you. You need to be able to do this on your own. So I thought, how could I translate this process into something that writers could use to make their revisions more strategic. Because I found that what I was learning to do as a writer in terms of revision was very, very different from what I was being taught as an editor to actually evaluate manuscripts and give feedback that helped. So I created this framework to help you. There are four steps to the revision process. And we want to go through each one in each round of revision. First, we're going to prioritize, then analyze, then strategize, and finally, revise.
And we are going to go into each of those steps. all right. Step one is to prioritize with clear goals. And in this case, I don't mean goals about how you're going to do the work. I mean goals about what your book is going to be for your readers. Because we need to know what we're trying to create before we can actually do the work to make it happen. And we need to set a goal for what our book is going to end up as when we finish this process.
And specifically, you're going to need to get clear on your personal priorities as a writer. What is the core of the book for you? And I know I talk a lot about getting your book ready for readers. I talk a lot about putting readers first, but you are the writer. This is your project. You have to be proud of what you create. You have to love what you create. So we will start with what matters to you. What is the core of your story? The message that you want to convey, the key piece of your story that it just wouldn't feel like yours anymore if you
That's where we're going to start. We're going to put that in the category of non-negotiables because throughout the revision process, you are going to have to make a lot of decisions. You are going to have to make some sacrifices, changes, things like that. And we want to know what is in that bucket of non-negotiable things that you're going to keep so that we can then make changes around it instead of trying to change that thing. You also need to get clear on your genre and your sub-genre. Now, that may seem really, really obvious. It may seem like you should already know your genre going into the revision process, but I will tell you, as an editor, I have people coming to me all the time who think that they are writing one thing when really they've created something else. They say that it's a romance, but there's no happily ever after. And the entire relationship develops off screen, which would be fine in a different type of book, but not if you're actually writing romance. So we need to figure out what genre are you aiming for? And does your book actually match that? Or are we going to to make changes? Or do you need to pick a different genre category? Either is fine. We just need to know what applies. You also want to figure out who exactly you were writing for. That involves both kind of the big categories like age. A YA book is gonna have a very different tone from a middle grade book or an adult book. So we need to know who is the audience. But it also has to do with what is your audience interested in? What kind of experience are they looking for when they pick up a book? And what do you need to deliver in order to make sure that they love the thing you create for them? And then finally, you also wanna think about your publishing goals. I don't think that the choice between self-publishing and traditional publishing should totally change your approach to the writing and revision process. However, you are going to have to keep a couple of different things in mind just based on those goals. For example, if you are going for a traditional publishing deal, word count is going to be far more important than if you are self-publishing. You still need to keep word count in mind because with self-publishing, you have to think about printing costs, but it's not as big of a deal compared to traditional publishing where an agent or an editor might have a cutoff point where they're no longer going to consider your book if you hit a certain word count and go over that. So it is something we want to consider. It doesn't necessarily make or break what you do with your story, but I do think it is important to keep in mind throughout the revision process so you can be strategic and know when you're making a decision that could affect your publishing chances versus a decision that is going to support them.
All right, most important though, we need to decide what kind of experience we are going to give to our future readers. What do we want them to get out of our story? What do we want them to feel when they finish? And to that we need to think about what matters most to those readers. What do they want from the type of book that you're writing? And that's going to vary genre to genre. If you are writing fantasy, maybe you need to all them with magic. Maybe you need to pull them into an adventure that makes them feel like they could be a hero saving the world just like your characters. If you are writing a cozy mystery, you are going to need to create a very different experience compared to if you were writing a different sub genre of mystery. You need to give us a sleuth who is not a professional, who's an amateur, who gets pulled into a mystery. It's not gonna be as gritty or boring as if you were writing a different type of mystery. So you really need to know what specifically are your readers looking for that they're not going to get from a different genre or from different writer. And then you need to figure out how can you deliver? What do we need to do to get our book to the point where it is ready for those readers who want a certain kind of experience from our book? And that brings us to step number two, where you are actually going to analyze your manuscript.
Before you can figure out how to create the book your readers need, you need to know what you're working with right now. What is happening in your current draft? And it is so key that we actually do this analysis step because oftentimes we think that we know what's happening in our story. We think we know what we put on the page. But in reality, there something else has happened in the drafting process. And it's super important to get clear on what is actually there on the page in the moment.
Too many writers at this point jump in and they start reading their draft as if it is a finished book. They just start on page one and try to treat it as if they are a reader and this book is ready for them. That can work if you are an experienced writer. It can work if you tend to write a clean draft, but for many of us, especially if you identify as a pantser, that process can be a recipe for despair and disaster because it is going to either gets you to hyper-focus on line level things that aren't important when you start revising, or it could lead to you getting so caught up in the gap between what you your book to be and what it is right now that you feel stuck and you don't even know if it's worth it to move forward. So we don't want that to happen. So instead, I recommend starting with a reverse outline. Basically, that is a summary of your book. Let's see. near saying experience. So I think that really varies. So experience could mean you have finished multiple books. It can mean you have already published before. There's no one thing that no one certifies you and says, check, you are an experienced writer now. It really is ⁓ just depends on how many stories you've written, how confident you feel in the process. ⁓ And it kind of is going to depend on you testing it out and seeing, is my first draft readable enough that I can sit down and somewhat experience it as a reader would?
Or if you're newer, ⁓ then maybe ⁓ that is going to be something that ⁓ it's not going to feel that way. Also say, even if you're experienced, but you are a cancer or someone who writes super messy drafts, you may never, never get to the point where your first draft is going to be readable. And that's totally fine. That's not the goal. I'm just saying, if you have more experience and you tend to write clean drafts, then maybe you're good. But you need to figure that out for yourself. I definitely identify as a panzer. I don't imagine getting to the point where my first draft is super readable and coherent. And that's OK. That's not what I'm aiming for. page example of the reverse outline, not right now for this workshop. But I'm going talk a little bit about how we could be working together. And that opportunity definitely does involve examples of the reverse outline. But you can also email me later. And I can send you a couple screenshots that I have from a different class that I taught as well. And I will put my email on the screen in a little bit.
All right, okay. So. Like I said, I recommend starting with a reverse outline, which is basically a summary of your book, either in bullet point format where you're summarizing each scene or each chapter with a bullet point, or you can do it in a spreadsheet. Some people like to do one scene per line in Excel. Some people like to do it more of a synopsis and write it out as a narrative summarized. There's so many options. There's no one right way that works for everyone. You have to figure out what works for you. But the key thing is that that reverse outline is going to boil your story down to the most important parts our purposes when we're revising, the most important part is the plot itself. It's character arcs, character development, that kind of thing that's happening at a very high level over the course of your story. And a good reverse outline is going to narrow your focus to just those elements. So you're not trying to focus on character descriptions and the arc and your plot and your plot all at the same time, you're narrowing our focus. It's also helpful for helping you isolate level revisions because we're only looking at an outline. We're only looking at how that plot develops over the course of story. We're not also thinking about how we executed it on the page in individual scenes. So we're isolating it to just the plot. We can worry about everything else later. And it's also a great way to keep your entire plot in your head because instead of working with your entire 500 page draft, you can narrow it down to a five page outline or maybe a 10 page outline that is much, much simpler to work with instead of trying to conquer your entire NSTC manuscript, an editor, have encounter manuscripts that are 700 plus pages and you don't want to try to hold that entire thing in your head all at once because it'll make your life so much harder than it needs to be. All right. Then that reverse outline is going to enable you to find plot holes and dropped threads. It's going to help you evaluate carriage arcs and the cause-effect chain and so many other things that are super important.
And the best trick with reverse outline is to revise the outline first, but we are going to do that in the next step. Not quite yet. I will get there in a second.
And with our reverse outline, we are looking at things like conflict development, narrative drive, narrative focus, character arcs, effect, subplots, and more. In the next 40-ish minutes that I have with you, I am not going be able to go into detail about what each one of these things is. ⁓ This is just an example of the types of things that we're going to look at with the reverse outline. So you can take this list, take a screenshot, and then if you need to do further research on what those are, you could either do that with me. I'll talk about how later. Or you can do that work on your own.
But again, this is just kind of the starting point, the overall process that you can take and run with and customize to what you need.
Our goal in step two, when we are analyzing our manuscripts, is essentially to figure out where we have fallen short of the vision that we set in step one. So you set a goal for what you want your book to be. In the analysis step, we figure out where we're not meeting that goal yet. And this is not so we can beat ourselves up. It's not so we can get stuck in these feelings of failure or just revel in all the ways that we have not met the goal that is not the purpose. The goal is that we figure out where we're not succeeding yet so we can do better and create the book that we want to give our readers. And that is what happens in step three when we start strategizing our revisions. In step three, we are going to choose solutions that are going to bridge the gap between the current draft and the vision we set for ourselves. You are going to ask yourselves questions like which revisions are going to serve my readers? Which scenes do I need to revise or add or cut? And how can I amplify what is working already in my story?
I think that last bullet point is so key. We often think of revision as just finding problems and fixing them, but it's not. Revision is also about finding what's already working and making it even better. How can we amplify the things that are already great, make them even, even better sometimes by cutting other things that aren't working so well. But again, revision is really about both what is working, what isn't working, how can we make the whole thing work together. The exact revisions you choose are going to depend on your book. It's going to depend on what you were trying to create.
If you need specific help figuring out what that is, stay tuned. But again, it really is going to be personal and it's more in-depth than I can cover in just an hour. But there are many different solutions for every revision problem out there. This is the stage where you try to figure out which ones are going to work for you. Like I said before, we're going to make those changes to the reverse outline, not the manuscript first, so that we can test things out without having to rewrite 50,000 words at a time.
You might be wondering why we're doing the analysis and the strategy step separately. Why, you know, why not just start planning solutions while we're still analyzing the manuscript or analyzing our reverse outline? And it's because every part of the novel is connected. Every part is working together. So what seems to be a conflict issue could actually be a character arc issue and vice versa. If you try to start coming up with solutions while you're still analyzing your manuscript, there is a good chance that you're going to end up with solutions that address the symptom and not the root cause. Because all these things are working together and sometimes issues seem like it's about pacing or it seems like it is about not having a likable character when there's really a deeper issue in play that needs to be addressed first. Otherwise, the changes that you make to your characters or your conflict are not going to land the way you want them to. So we really want to get that holistic picture of our story first. We want to analyze the whole thing first and then think
How can we revise in a way that is going to address multiple problems at once? How can we revise in a way that is going to make the entire story better instead of trying to address these little pieces in isolation?
All right, again, if you made a reverse outline, this is when you're going to edit it with those planned changes. You add summaries of the scenes you're planning to write, mark scenes that need to be cut, and then make notes of changes that you're going to make to other scenes. This is not something that we're going to try to do all in one round. You might go through multiple rounds of revision with just your reverse outline, adding little changes, seeing if there are ripple effects in other parts of the manuscript, and then continuing on until you feel like you have gotten your plot to a solid place where it makes sense in the reverse outline.
At this point, it's also helpful to start setting specific goals for your process. Give yourself a deadline. Mark writing sessions on the calendar so you can commit to them. There is, again, no one right way to do this, so whatever works for you. Some of us really like to have a lot of structure and set specific goals. Other people are going to prefer something that's more flexible. Whatever works for you, this is the time to kind of think about, what do you want this revision process to look like going forward? All right. And then finally, it is time for step four, revising your draft.
And you will notice that we have gotten to the end of the process, and this is the first time I have mentioned actually making a change to your manuscript. And that is because in a successful revision, 90 % of the work is going to happen before you touch a single word in your draft. That is what we're doing, the hard thinking. We're making decisions. We are figuring out what is going to make our story better. So all of that thinking is done, and we have a clear plan guiding us before we ever sit down to start writing again.
Once you have that clear strategy, it becomes easier to implement, becomes more efficient, and hopefully more effective.
Are you going to run into issues or potentially have to make changes along the way? Yes, most likely you will. But that pre-work is still going to help us work smarter every step of the way. But again, we aren't going to stick super rigidly to that plan because we want to leave room for creativity. We want to leave room for our ideas to keep developing and changing along the way. And that is totally fine.
Now, this is another benefit of starting with a reverse outline. That's why I am such a fan, because you can now use that reverse outline as a checklist for your revisions. Each one of those changes you marked on the reverse outline becomes a task for you to complete in a future writing session. So you could work through it chronologically if that works for you and your brain, or you could bounce around because you don't have to worry about messing up something in your book if you jump straight to chapter 50 instead of starting with chapter one, because you've already done the thinking. You've already decided what's going to change along the way. So gives you a lot of freedom to kind of bounce around without having to worry that you might be creating problems for yourself down the road.
All right, some tips for addressing this step, because even though a lot of the thinking and hard work has been done, when we get to the revising stage, that is still going to be a difficult part, it's going to be a time-consuming part. So I recommend setting a realistic schedule that involves breaks when you need them. Do not try to just rush through, just because you've done the thinking doesn't mean it's going to be super, super fast or that you need to finish on a certain timeline. Give yourself the space, creative breaks.
Let yourself take this process as slowly as you need to to do it successfully. It's better than burning out and giving up on your story completely. think taking a break can also be a great way to see your story with clarity. So I highly recommend giving yourself a revision timeline that allows you to rest, recharge, and come back to your story with new energy when you need to. I also recommend staying focused on revision, not editing. Even though you've made revision decisions ahead of time, we still want to stay focused on developmental issues. Even when we're working with specific scenes, we are focused on plot level stuff, not going into, my heroine's eyes be sapphire or emerald? Those are not the questions for right now. We want to focus on keep making those conflicts as strong as possible. We want to make sure each scene is purposeful and engaging. And then we can worry about all that line level stuff later once the story itself is solid. The other thing I recommend is that you don't copy paste or work in your old draft. I actually recommend retyping the entire story. And yes, I did actually say, retype your draft, and I mean it. ⁓ Retyping is a great way to make sure you actually make changes. It's the same kind of concept from physics that an object in motion stays in motion, an object rest stays at rest. If you are working with an already complete draft and really trying to make changes, ⁓ it's a lot harder to do that than it is to start fresh with something new and make it better. Because when you are in your draft, if you want to take out a whole paragraph, you have to actually highlight the whole thing, delete it. Those words are gone. You feel like you lost something. And oftentimes when people are just making tweaks to a draft, they end up pushing issues down the road into their next revision. So even if they feel like they're being productive because they have technically revised, they changed some words around in a paragraph, making those big meaningful changes often means rewriting huge sections. It means actually getting rid of stuff that isn't serving your future readers, that isn't as strong as it could be.
And it's going to be much, much easier to make those changes if you are actually retyping the story and not just fiddling around with the draft you already have. Now, I don't mean actually rewriting it from memory that is excessive and not necessary. What I like to do is have one copy of the draft next to me, and then I have a blank document, and I am referencing the old copy while retyping the new one. Yeah. So again, that is just a way to actually force yourself to decide.
Is that original sentence or original paragraph strong enough to stay in the new draft? Or is there something better that is going to have more conflict, more tension, that is going to better communicate who my character is, that is going to better develop the world, whatever it is? We want to make sure that we are only putting the best content into our new draft and not just moving problems down the road into another round of revision by keeping things almost entirely the same with only small changes.
I am not saying that you need to do this for every single draft that you write. This is a great strategy for going from your first draft to your second draft. But I don't, but again, you're not going to do this every single time. Now, if you are someone who has made only very cursory changes in your first few rounds revision, you might have a fourth draft that quite honestly isn't all that different from your first draft. And maybe you need to do this to go from draft four to draft five. So fine, but we're not going to do it again to go from draft five to draft six unless something huge comes up along the way. But we're not going to this every single time. We are going to do it when we need to make big, meaningful changes to our main shows. Again, we're also still revising. We're not going to spend hours and hours and hours fine-tuning every single word. We are going to make a concentrated effort, to improve what we have on the page. Because ultimately, every plot-level element of your story gets executed on the page with words. It's happening in your scenes. So, while we do want to try to separate editing from revision, it's not going to be a perfect split because all of your characters' traits come out through the words you use to describe them. All of your conflicts come out through the words that you use to describe the conflict. So there is a little bit of that line-ending element baked in, but we are going to try to stay focused on just making those followable changes, improving the story as a whole versus, again, we're not trying to decide what is the perfect name for the bread-type product in your fantasy world or anything like that, that can wait for later. Also, I just to say, if you are not someone who can retype comfortably or efficiently, do what works for you. Again, I'm not saying that everyone should do this. If it's going to be something that's going to be a hardship, either because of your schedule or low physical needs, that's fine. This is not the only way to do this work. If you can commit to making those big meaningful changes while working your draft, do it. And don't even worry about this process.
Oh, I also want say I did not come up with this idea of retyping originally if you want to learn more about it. I originally got this from Matt Bell and his book Refused to Be Done, excellent book on the topic of revision that I highly recommend.
All right, to recap, I just threw a lot of information at you, but our four steps overall. We're going to start by prioritizing with clear goals of what we want our story to be. Then we are going to analyze what is happening in our current draft, strategize revisions that will get us closer to our ultimate goal and how we want to serve readers. And then finally, we are going to put all of those pieces into action when we actually go back and revise our story by retyping the draft or committing to making those meaningful changes in the draft that we already have.
Margaret, thank you. I'm so glad this is helpful. I do love memoir even though it is not a genre that I work with. Okay, so now that you know the process and where you know my recommendation for how to approach this revision process, you might be feeling overwhelmed. You might be thinking this is too much work or my book is even worth it. I just want to leave you with this quote. If there's a book that you want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. You have a voice. You have a story to tell.
There is a reason why you decided to go on this journey of creating a book. You have something to say and that matters. I want your story to be in the world. I want readers to find it. I want it to be great. At the same time, I also firmly believe that if there is a book you want someone else to read, then you must revise it. No matter how hard you have worked on writing your book, you don't automatically earn anyone's time or attention or money. You have to earn it.
And this is a little bit of tough love, but I think it is true. There are so many books in the world and more and more are getting published every single day. And of course, some of them are AI garbage that no one really wants to read, but a lot of them are coming from writers just like you who are committed to writing a great book, who really care about their stories. And if you want your book to be competitive, you have to do the work to make it great because your story is worth it and your future readers are worth it. So you have to do the work to make it ready for them, to make it great for them, and it's worth it.
Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer podcast. I really hope you enjoyed that replay of the free masterclass.
If you're listening to this episode when it comes out live, then my brand new revision course, Reader Ready Revisions, is officially open for enrollment. So, if you enjoyed what you heard in this master class, if you like the way that I teach and you want to dive even deeper into every nuance of the revision process, find the link for Reader Ready Revisions wherever you're listening to the show.
Enrollment will be open until Friday, January 30th, and I would love to have you in the course so that I can help you write the best book possible. Now, if you're listening to this in the future, don't worry, I will be running this course again. So get on my newsletter, check out my website, and you can find out when the next session is going to be open for enrollment. All right, thank you again for listening to this episode. I hope you learned something. I hope it was helpful.
If you have a writer friend who could benefit from this lesson as well, Please share this episode with them. Leave a review. Share it on social media. I really appreciate anything you can do to help this podcast find as many writers who need it as possible. Alright. Thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful week.
Keep writing and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya.
