Letting Go (Also, a Revision Smackdown)

Back in 2006, my husband and I decided that we were ready to become homeowners. It only took us a few weeks to find the perfect place--a fixer-upper condo with a brick fireplace, two (2!) full bathrooms, and a gigantic patio. We had a blast tearing out the pink carpet and the flowered wallpaper, and we painted the walls in warm, cozy hues. We filled the big patio planter with tomatoes and herbs. We installed a hammock.

But Rachel, you may ask, wasn't 2006 a bad time to buy a home? Why yes, my friend, you are correct. Over the years, we watched the value plummet, and our fixer-uppering dwindled to a halt. Things we had looked forward to changing--the archaic bathrooms, the scarred kitchen floor--became things we accepted. It took a couple of years, but we've finally realized that this little adventure is not going to have a happy ending, and so yesterday we took the first steps toward hitting eject.

It's not too hard to make the writing analogy here. I love my home, and I'm attached to it, but I've got to let it go now, because it's not right for us. It's pulling us down into a black hole, both financially and emotionally. The same goes for those favorite scenes--you wrote them, and you want very much for them to work, but sometimes you've got to make that tough call and let them go so that you don't pull your reader out of the story. To use my mother's favorite phrase, Such is life.

In other news, I've got a week left until we head off to Europe for a ten-day vacation, and I'm Really Freaking Serious about getting my content revisions done before then. To that end, I've drawn up a Google calendar for my Revision Smackdown, an eight-day plan to hit all the chapters that need major content changes. Here's what it looks like:

My goal is to get all my major content changes done before the trip, so I can leave for ten days, come back refreshed and ready to polish, maybe send it out for a last few beta reads, and hopefully soon I will be ready to send this puppy out into the world and see what happens. At least that is the plan! I'm supposed to fit this around trip preparations, getting my condo ready for a sales showing, and, oh yeah, my full-time job. So we'll see how it goes.

Do you have any deadlines set for yourself? How are they going?