A common question I’m asked is how I revise poems and compile a manuscript. What does that process look like? This post is an answer of sorts, if a bit tongue-in-cheek (or stuck straight out at my computer screen). Since I officially announced I’m working on Volume Two of This Too is Prayer, there’s no time like the present to procrastinate!
I don’t have a release date yet, so don’t hold me to a deadline. Do me a favor and go buy a copy of LitMiH to send to your friends while you’re waiting—or snag some merch on my ko-fi! If you sign up as a monthly supporter, you’ll also get progress updates on my art + writing goals for the year.
Come kick my ass into gear, why don’t you?!
(Seriously, do it, drag me out of bed so I can lay on the couch and stare at the ceiling while sobbing along with my favorite playlists.)
(This is a good thing.)
What You’ll Need:
- a binder
- a spreadsheet (or 3)
- lots of loud music and late nights
Step One: Pick Your Poems!
When I first planned out this series, I created a word doc of All The Poems I’d written between 2020 and the first half of 2022. I also created a spreadsheet, where I listed each poem in one column and listed a theme in the next column. The MegaDoc&Sheet (for lack of a better term) gave me an idea of how many poems would be in each volume, knowing I would write more in the future. I do my best to update these two files as I go along—at the very least, I try to do it once a year.
In starting Volume 2, I reviewed this MegaDoc&Sheet to see which poems I needed to put into a VolumeDoc&Sheet. Ideally, this would be a simple process:
- Filter MegaSheet to only show poems for Volume 2.
- Find thosee poems in the MegaDoc.
- Copy said poems into the VolumeDoc.
- List title of said poem in the VolumeSheet.
Of course, since I don’t always remember everything I write or where I put it, I discovered several poems were missing from…lots of places?! Some were in my spreadsheet but not the MegaDoc. Some were in my notebook but not in the MegaDoc or the spreadsheet. Some were duplicates—because I number every poem as I add it to the MegaDoc&Sheet, and apparently, some of those showed up twice?!
The numbering gets weird, by the way. There’s the number I use to reference the poem in the MegaDoc, but as I copy/ paste the poems into the VolumeDoc, I add a new number in parenthesis. This helps me keep track of how many poems are in the volume…and then I make it even more complicated when I (eventually) figure out what order the poems go in. But that comes later. For now, I just make sure the poems in the VolumeSheet have a number in parenthesis next to the title, and I make sure that it matches what’s in the Volume Doc.
Another item of note: these poems are still drafts. That means they’re going to get revised, and those revisions often include their titles. On the VolumeSheet, I have a column for New Title—and this is part of why it’s so important for me to have those numbers in parentheses. It helps me keep track of which poems are in each volume (even as those poems undergo changes) so I don’t repeat a poem later on.
I have three other columns on the VolumeSheet: Companion Art, Revised, and Retyped. This is an illustrated poetry series after all! Not every poem gets an illustration, and when I’m starting out, I don’t know which poems will spark illustrations. That’s the fun of revising—but we’re not there yet!
Step Two: Print Your Hard Copies!
When I’m making the VolumeDoc, I start every new poem on a fresh page. This particular volume has several lengthy poems, which prompted me adding an off-centered heading: “[Poem Title]—page 2”. After I print the VolumeDoc single-sided, I put them in a binder in the same order that they’re listed in the VolumeSheet. This isn’t the order in which I’ll revise them, nor is it the order for the final manuscript—it just makes it easier to check that I do, in fact, have all the poems in this binder that are supposed to be in the binder. (Except for when it doesn’t.)
It probably won’t surprise you that I use sheet protectors. They make it easier for me to flip through the binder, and they also help me keep my notes together. (More on that later, when we get to the actual revising part. Can you believe we’re not there yet?! Or maybe it’s all the revising part…)
Where possible, I prefer to keep a poem in a single spread. That means that if I have a two-page poem, I’ll try to put the printout on pages that face each other (left and right) as opposed to having them front-to-back. It’s easier for me to visualize the shape of a poem when I can see it all at once, rather than having to flip back and forth between pages.
As you may have guessed, two- and three-page poems make it harder to put things in the Exact Same Order as what’s on the spreadsheet. I suppose I could just put blank sheets of paper as filler…but I think that would confuse me even more. Anyway, the good news is that I can use my reference numbers!
By the way, have you printed that spreadsheet yet? The one with the list of poems on it? I actually do use page numbers there—specifically the “Page 1 of [X]” format—because things get scattered and rearranged in all sorts of ways.
But first! Before all that!
Pretend to forget about the binder for 3-6 months, even though you feel it staring at you from its place across the room, under that pile of laundry on your coffee table. Feel free to announce that you’ve compiled your working documents, by the way! Everyone will be very excited about all the work you’re definitely doing on your manuscript.
When you talk about the scope of the project and write a blog post about your process, it’ll almost feel like you’re actually revising! Anyway—you’ve done a lot of hard work for now. Why not take a break? Aren’t your friends always telling you rest is important? Go take a nap and enjoy the sunshine. You can figure out the rest later.
V. H. King's Ink 
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