Revisiting a Manuscript

Where did summer go? I feel like I'm living in some kind of weird time warp that makes time go by far too quickly. It feels like just yesterday that I was working on my latest WIP, a YA sci-fi/paranormal romance tentatively titled Butterfly Dome. I put it down after finishing the first draft on June 11, then dove straight into edits for Flynn Nightsider and the Edge of Evil, my YA fantasy/dystopia that's coming out next spring (I seem to have a thing for mixing genres, don't I?). After finishing revisions/rewrites, I spent a month catching up on reading (and letting my fried brain recover), then set about plotting the third book in the Artificial Absolutes trilogy.

Now that that's done, I can finally get back to Butterfly Dome and start working on Draft 2. But as I was rereading it, I realized there were a lot of things I don't remember writing! I still can't believe it, but three months have passed since I last opened the manuscript file. What!

Revisiting a manuscript after a few months gives you a whole different perspective. Things I didn't see before jump out (mostly weird wording). Also, because I'm less familiar with it than I was when I first finished writing it, I can approach it as a reader (or as much as one can approach one's own work from such a perspective). It's quite different from what I remember...

I've heard it said that it's good to set your manuscript down after working on it for a spell, and I've done it in the past. I think the change in perspective is just more stark with Butterfly Dome than with my other works because I churned that book out so quickly and never gave it a read-through when I was done. I definitely think it's helpful doing things this way - I'll have to keep that in mind for whatever I end up working on next.