Keep reading for some revision ideas, inspired by Jolie Stekly and Holly Cupala's SUMMER REVISION SMACKDOWN...

I've been participating this month in the SUMMER REVISION SMACKDOWN, created by authors JOLIE STEKLY and HOLLY CUPALA. It's been fun because they've provided daily tips from published authors about the revision process on their blogs. And everyone posts comments on their revision progress as well.

Their blogs are here:

http://brimstonesoup.blogspot.com/

http://cuppajolie.blogspot.com/

And here's the official tip I gave them this week:

http://cuppajolie.blogspot.com/2009/06/srs-lash-flash-3-paula-yoo.html

As I've mentioned before, on top of my writing duties and music gigs, I substitute teach when I can at various K-12 public schools in the Los Angeles area. I love teaching and it's a great experience. It's also turned out to be fantastic "research" as I get a chance to really observe authentic teen, tween, and child behavior. It's definitely inspired me as I prepare to work on my next books. But because of the teaching, I haven't had enough time to write NEW material, so I've been printing out my drafts and revising them by red pen between the classes I sub for!

As for revising, I've been working on an adult novel about my teaching experiences. It's been a fun ride so far. When I first started writing, I wrote adult novels. My MFA in creative writing as an adult historical novel that I never finished because I then got involved with SCBWI and children's writing. My funny teaching experiences inspired me this year to try my hand at a new adult novel because I haven't written one in years.

One big thing I learned with revising Chapter One of my adult novel was how easy it is fall into the Flashback Trap. Chapter One was the toughest chapter the read - the other chapters (I'm on Chapter Five) moved along at a nice clip. But I kept getting bogged down in Chapter One.

And I finally realized what was wrong - I had a flashback within a flashback in Chapter One! Yes, you heard that right. A flashback WITHIN a flashback. The actual story didn't happen until page 10.

I had two choices - Cut the first 9 pages and start the story on page 10. Which would have totally worked but then I thought... why not turn the flashback AND the flashback within a flashback into the present-day story?

Lo and behold, that solved the problem. Phew!

So my revision tip for novel writing is that you will probably write way too many flashbacks in Chapter One. This is a natural "mistake" because you're probably still trying to figure out the heart of the story. So when revising, ask yourself if you can either cut out the flashbacks or transform them into present-day story scenes. Avoid getting sucked into the flashback vortex!

As for picture books, I finally finished the first draft of my new non-fiction picture book biography. But it was way too long - over 3,000 words! Yikes! But I wasn't too worried - I tend to overwrite when it comes to children's non-fiction picture books because it's easier to cut back. It's better, I think, to throw as much detail in at first because it is non-fiction and you can never be sure as to which historical details will matter the most until you have a finished draft to read through. Once you read through the full draft, you get a sense of what details actually push the story forward and what historical information is essential to the storyline.

So today, I had to get some errands done. I decided to stop by a nearby Starbucks for an hour just to read through my first draft and cut, cut, cut with my red pen. Here's a photo of what it looked like:

And guess what? I had to share with you these embarrassing first draft "mistakes." Even after publishing three books, I'm still using too many words to describe stuff that only needs ONE word! LOL!

Below are a few choice gems from my first draft:

-- "Round circle" - Really? A ROUND circle? As what, opposed to a SQUARE circle?

-- "He started to ..." I'm always saying people are STARTING to do something, instead of just doing it. So instead of saying, "He started to wonder..." why not just say "He wondered"? Duh!

-- "He watched as..." Well, if they're watching, then why not describe what they're watching. For example, "He watched his mother opened the door." Why not just, "His mother opened the door." Or, "She opened the door." LOL!

-- "They ate every single last crumb..." Why not "They ate every crumb." It's still not Shakespeare, but EVERY SINGLE LAST... come on, Paula! LOL!

But as much as I laugh at myself, I'm not ashamed of these "mistakes." Because you're SUPPOSED to be a little sloppy in your first draft. You've got plenty of time to clean it up, tweak, revise, delete. I believe in doing the "vomit draft" where you don't censor yourself and you don't stop to edit yourself as you write the first draft. Because hidden among all that verbose wordiness might be a diamond or two. :)

I will say that after having written for many, many years, my first drafts are not as verbose or sloppy as in years past. But I still find myself writing silly things like "round circles." LOL! So if you are beating yourself up over any first draft problems as you revise, always tell yourself, "Yeah, but at least I didn't write 'round circle' like Paula Yoo did." HAHA!

Good luck to everyone participating in SUMMER REVISION SMACKDOWN! At some point, I'm going to figure out how to gather all you PiBo's who participated in NaPiBoWriWee (National Picture Book Writing Week 2009) to come back so we can do our own revision bootcamp of sorts. Stay tuned! Until then, hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!