I recommend throwing out point 10 unless you have a truly compelling reason for pitching out all your old words. First drafts often have plenty of energy. I recently found myself looking over the first scribbled rough draft of SAVING THE GRIFFIN. The actual conversation between my two main characters made it almost word for word into the first page of the book.

What’s a good reason for doing a massive revision such as the one in point 10? I actually did this once for my first novel-length manuscript about 13 years after I finished it the first time. I’d grown quite a bit as a writer, but when I went back to the project, I could tell that I was just nibbling around the edges of the story. So I changed my main character’s family background and commenced on the revision. But I did look at the original pages just to make sure that there wasn’t anything that I wanted to put back in for a true synthesis.

And how about point 13? The seven complete from the ground up revisions? Uh, no. But I keep myself open to discovering new things about my characters with each sweep through the manuscript.

So what are my numbers? I’ll have close to three published novels in twenty plus years of work. Along with that, I have three projects circulating and four that are in the desk drawer.