How I approached my dev edits this June as a newly agented author

After writing everyday in the month of June, I have emerged from the editing cave and achieved my goal of completing the first draft of my big picture edits in a month—with a couple of days to spare. Yay!

Thanks to my experience as a SmoochPit mentee, I had a better idea of what to expect with revisions following an edit letter. During SmoochPit, I spent a bit of time doing things wrong i.e. spinning my wheels while implementing my mentor’s edit suggestions because I had no clear idea what I was going to do. For two months I wrote, deleted, wrote and deleted. But once I knew exactly how I wanted to revise, the actual implementation took less than two weeks.

So this time, as soon as I received the first edit letter from my agent, I spent a week brainstorming and planning the edits as opposed to diving right into the words.

Brainstorming, for me, is always a mess. Ideas come any time, anywhere they want, and who am I to say no when they come knocking? So I jotted down random ideas on my phone, in my notebook at home, in another notebook at work.

At the same time, I created a new reverse outline of my manuscript in Notion, slotting in those random ideas and noting down the changes I wanted to make in each chapter. These notes sometimes included rough drafts of new paragraphs and dialogue, etc. as they came to me. Reverse outlining is now my #1 editing tool.

It was far less daunting approaching the actual edits when I already knew the changes I wished to make on a chapter level. Some chapters didn’t actually require dev changes, but I ended up editing every single chapter anyway because I did line and copy edits at the same time.

And let me tell you, there were plenty of those little edits to make despite the number of times I’d previously gone over my manuscript with a fine-toothed comb. Some of them made me pause and wonder how I managed to get offers of representation 🙈 but I guess it proves agents aren’t looking for perfection from querying writers?

Before commencing these edits, I had set my manuscript aside for about 6-8 weeks to work on my new WIP, and the time away from it helped me pick up on things with fresh(er) eyes and made me feel more excited about returning to this world too.

Given my obsession with tracking progress, here are the daily stats:

I deleted parts, but I added a whole lot more, and ended up with a net increase of 4,500 words. 😅

By the last week, I could feel myself running out of steam, hence the page progress tapering out towards the end. Being a night owl, I’ve been editing until 1-2am everyday and I don’t think my body/brain enjoyed that very much. That said, I still added a decent number of words each day in those last few days, which brings me to the tools I started using this month for some additional self-motivation.

I mentioned in an earlier post how I’d started using apps to gamify my habits. For the past six months, I’ve continued to use Habitica daily to track my todos and habits. It’s fun, but it’s just not something I find motivating while I’m writing. (Obviously, I enjoy writing itself, but a bit of extra fun never hurts.)

Soon after I started editing, I discovered Virtual Cottage 2 from a fellow writer. This game features a number of different beautiful, cosy locations to work in, including multiplayer spaces to work with friends and strangers in, focus/pomodoro timers, calming lofi music and background sound effects. Every evening, I looked forward to editing in a virtual cafe with others and collecting new furniture items to dress up my rooms with.

Browsing similar games on Steam brought me to Spirit City: Lofi Sessions, a similar game with similar focus features and lofi vibes, but more immersive. Given the current 50% off for the Steam Summer Sale, I bit the bullet and gave it a go.

Compared to Virtual Cottage 2, I found Spirit City a little overwhelming to begin with and at one point I considered refunding it. But now, I’m obsessed.

It’s so pretty, so customisable, I can collect new companion pets, and there’s a lot more music too. The developers are so sly with how they lured me in with an affordable price tag for the base game though, cause after two days, I splurged on the entire bundle of DLCs. 🙄

Now, I’m using both games interchangeably depending on my mood. Spirit City is purely single player, so whenever I feel for those busy cafe vibes, I’m back on Virtual Cottage. And when I prefer to see my character doing other non-writing activities (like cooking, reading, meditating, playing with my cat, etc.) I’ll reach for Spirit City.

These games have worked so well that they make me so eager to boot up my manuscript every night so I can continue working along with my digital companion.

As a serial multitasker, I struggle to do only one thing at a time. If I even tried to only write, I’d probably end up browsing random things and online shopping.

So while editing this month, I also binged two Chinese dramas: 家業 (The Heir) and 書卷一夢 (Dream Within a Dream).

While Pursuit of Jade is all the rage these days (very well-deserved in my opinion), The Heir now ranks as my personal favourite of all the C-dramas I watched in at least the past 12 months.

Given the C-drama vibes of my stories, they’re so great for providing inspiration too.

To keep the momentum going throughout my edits, I didn’t spend much time agonising over any particular part as I always planned to go over my track changes again from the start. Now, I’m giving myself a week to review the edits and make some tweaks. (I say ‘review’ and ‘tweaks’ just as I add another 300 words 🫠)

Fun times (and hopefully better sleep) ahead!