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“Write a WHAT, Mrs. Bradley?”

“How long does it have to be?”

“Can we write ANY story? Like, ANYTHING we want?!?”

“Wait, what’s a novel?”

It was early October, my students were well into our school routine, when I took a sharp detour, ditched my current lesson plans, and challenged my 8th graders to write a novel in a month. At that point I hadn’t done a lot of planning for NaNoWriMo, but I hoped my students would be as excited about the project as I was. 

I’ve come to love the editing process. Sure, the first draft is an unforgettable joyride. But it usually takes me a few drafts to discover the juiciest, most memorable parts of my story.

Staying focused and motivated long enough to get to those “eureka!” moments, though, is a huge challenge for my brain. In honor of Revision Summer, I’ve pulled together the three biggest editing blunders I’ve made, along with some tips on how you can avoid them.

Let my pain be your gain!

How do you, dear Wrimos, navigate the boring, annoying, and sometimes icky parts of the revision process? How can you/do you gamify it?

Dialogue can make up anywhere from 10 to 50 percent of a novel. Getting it to sound like two or more people legitimately talking to each other doesn’t have to be a drag. Here are a few easy ways to whip your dialogue into better shape.

Don’t leave your NaNo project hanging. You have everything it takes to finish that sucker already within you. Here are 3 quick tips to move you into the Finish Column. 

Just as we use scaffolding to construct buildings, we use specific writing devices, tools, and tricks to create fiction. However, as we must remove the braces and platforms before putting the home on the market, we must identify and remove these structural supports from our stories before submitting them. We need such tools to write the story, but leaving them lying about afterward–like a table saw in the middle of the living room–distracts the readers and gets in the way of their enjoyment of the story.

Here’s a list of common types of scaffolding writers use in their early drafts and how to revise them away:

You might think revising is a rough and rigorous ritual: a rigid writing desk, a ruthless red pen, a wrinkled brow, and seventeen cups of tea that regretfully go cold. You read and re-read the same wayward writing until the words wobble and warp, and no longer look like words at all.

But revising does not need to be dreadfully dull. A little silliness can shake loose the details your brain has stopped seeing and make you a sharper editor.

Editor’s note: It’s summer in the northern hemisphere, which means it’s time for double scoops of Rocky Road, trips to the beach, and endless hours locked in a darkened room trying to revise your November draft into something presentable. To celebrate the start of editing season, we’ll be filling the NaNo 2.0 blog with tips on revising and finishing a month-long manuscript. We’re excited to kick things off with this post from author Alan Lastufka, who reminds us where all those long hours of creative work can lead. Take it away, Alan!

Last fall, my small press, Shortwave, signed a worldwide sales and distribution deal with Simon & Schuster.

Last month, the NaNo 2.0 team participated in a “planning retreat” over a series of three days to think about what we wanted to accomplish in 2026, and how to realistically make those things happen. 

While we would have preferred to meet up in some sort of cozy writer’s cabin in the woods, we had to settle for a Zoom call, given the fact that we’re scattered all over the place and have full-time jobs. But for the purposes of this blog post, just imagine we made all of these decisions you’re about to read about in a place like this.

So! What was the outcome of the retreat? I’m so glad you asked.

We’ve emerged from our bat-infested winter slumbers, and our volunteer crew has officially kicked off work on site improvements for the fall. We’ll be posting about those efforts—and the community feedback that inspired them—soon!

In the meantime, we wanted to take a page from Laura’s book and share some things we loved, learned, and are still pondering from NaNo 2.0’s first year. (If you’re just tuning in, you might want to start with our origin story.)