1. Print out a fresh copy of your manuscript and set it on your desk, next to the unopened Post-it notes, highlighters, and reference books you thought you’d use while writing it.
2. Mark your calendar for the next week with daily blocks titled “Read my manuscript.”
3. On the first day of your reading week, read five pages, mark everything wrong with a red pen, add a dozen new ideas per paragraph to the margins, and then go to bed with a family-size bag of salt and vinegar potato chips while you think about what a terrible writer you are.
4. Move the daily reading blocks on your calendar for the following month because you’re clearly not in the right headspace yet. When other writers kindly remind you it’s taken them years to return to their manuscripts, nod and don’t mention you never re-read the novel you wrote five years ago.
5. Now that you’ve got some free time, go on a date with the first guy you match with on a dating app, fall madly in love the moment he smiles at you, then spend the next three months completely consumed by the romance.
6. On a random Tuesday, when you’re woken up at 4 a.m. to the sound of your downstairs neighbor slamming furniture and screaming, call the police, evacuate your apartment at a moment’s notice, and move into your friend’s Airbnb. Safety first, manuscript second … maybe third.
7. In the next two months, help your new boyfriend move, look for an apartment for yourself, and then move into it. When fellow writers at the Book Revision Lab ask how revision is going, tell them you’ve had a rough (but also awesome) last couple of months and you’ll start reading your manuscript soon. Sure, the Lab is almost over, but writers are no strangers to cramming under a tight deadline.
8. Twelve days into moving into your new apartment, after you’ve finally taken stock and cried at everything that went right and wrong over the seven months since finishing your manuscript, look for your manuscript and promise you’ll start reading it the next day.
9. The next day, sit at a local cafe and read the digital version of the manuscript. You did find that now old printed copy, but since you wrote it on a computer, reading it on a screen feels more natural.
10. As you read your labor of love, be careful to make no notes, no edits, no judgments, just read and, finally, face the fact that all those months ago, you weren’t just distracted—you were taking a much-needed break from re-reading your memoir. Pausing, letting the work “breathe,” and finding your way back to the manuscript is what book writing is all about.