After finishing my revisions on “The Mockingbirds”  just last week,  I realized revisions for an editor are like pitching to Murderer’s Row. That’s the famed lineup of the 1927 New York Yankees with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, considered by many to be one of the greatest lineups of all time.

I’ve revised before — for my critique partners, for my agent, even for my editor before she bought the novel. But now I am effectively revising for the reader. These revisions are to turn the book into something real people will want to buy and read. And that’s the difference between having a wicked curveball in the minor leagues and then getting called up to “The Show,” aka the Big Leagues. Because the level of players you’re up against rises exponentially. Revisions for readers are a major league lineup, one through nine, with no soft spots. And this is the American League. You don’t get to take a break and pitch to the pitcher. You have to throw to every single batter and the designated hitter has biceps the size of your car.

The revisions I was asked to do aren’t plot centric or fixing typos or tweaking a fact. They’re emotional. They’re about characters. They’re about motivation. They speak to every single element that actually ties the story together and turns it into a seamless tale (I hope). The revisions are things like: why are these characters so close, what inspires such loyalty, why does this character feel this way, why does she share this piece of information with this person, how is this boy different from that boy? Then there are the emotion issues. Can you draw a deeper connection between these two ideas? Can you explore different emotions related to this issue in different scenes in the first half of the book? Can you dig into the complexities of the emotions surrounding this relationship?

So I did all that. I threw my curveball and my ninety-five mile-an-hour fastball and even the off-speed stuff and I mowed down the revisions one by one, just like a major league lineup.

But then once you do all that, once you turn your insides out and give all your emotions, energy, vim and vigor to your novel, you’re not quite done. Because then you have to make sure it holds together. Did this new level of emotion change this final chapter? Does this new character backstory affect what she says 100 pages later? Does this new chapter obviate the need for this old chapter?

And so on…So that’s why I stopped blogging during the revisions because if you want to pitch to a major league lineup and not get creamed, you’ve got to get in the zone. Then you have to put your arm on ice.

And now I’m back!