Discussion: How Long Do You Let Your WIPs Cool?

Photo credit: Alessandro Lorizzo on Flickr

So many a year ago, I wrote about the importance of letting your manuscripts cool between finishing the first draft and starting the first read through. And while I do still believe it’s important for many writers for the reasons I listed in that post, my process has a changed a little since getting agented.

It used to be when I finished a first draft, I’d put it away and eagerly wait a month before looking at it again. This worked well when I was working on one project at a time, at thirty or so days gave me enough distance to then look at the writing more critically than I would have had I started reading right after first drafting.

A month worked really well for ages up until last year when a couple things happened:

1. I signed with my agent (yay!) 
2. We sold Beyond the Red (YAY!) 
3. I wrote two first drafts back to back (oh…kay?) 
4. I looked at my NaNo MS from 2013 and knew I couldn’t just leave it. 
5. I maybe sort of pitched a bunch of books to my agent and suddenly I was juggling a bunch of projects. (Yay? Yay!) 

So now I had all of these manuscripts and after working out a good order for which manuscript would get attention first, I realized all of the projects would be getting wayyyyy more than a month-long cooling off period.

First came the #NerdyWIP I’ve talked about, which had a cooling off period of…five or six months? Something like that.

Then the #YAFantasyWIP got a ton of love after sitting in the drawer for well over a year.

And now I’ll be turning to the second MS I drafted last summer, just about a year later.

Waiting this much longer, even unintentionally, has its perks. When I go back to those WIPs, I’m usually pretty darn excited because I’ve been waiting so long to get back to them, and I also remember very little about them which may not sound like a perk, but actually makes it so much easier to look at not just the writing critically, but the plot, and characters, and everything else.

So lately that’s what I’ve been doing. And while this may very well change with circumstance, it’s been an interesting schedule to work with.

So how about you? How long do you let your WIPs cool before the first read through? 

Twitter-sized bite: 

How long do you let your WIP cool between 1st drafting & 1st read through? Join the discussion on @Ava_Jae's blog. (Click to tweet)