Definition of pilgrimage: a journey, usually a long one, to some sacred place; an act of religious devotion.
Take away the religion and that's it.
I'm in the process of a pilgrimage at the moment and if the start was England and the finish is, say, Jerusalem, I'm currently travelling through Greece.
Along the years, I have found there are 5 main stages to pass through - check points if you like - to get to the end of it:
Check point 1 - write the damn thing (see previous post) The longest leg of the journey.
Check point 2 - go back and make it MUCH better. This can mean taking out entire chapters, rewriting scenes, or just tarting up a line or two. Usually all three.
Checkpoint 3 - the edit. It's your third time through and you've gone through the 'actually, this is bloody brilliant' phase and now you're descending into the 'this book is SO DULL!' swamp of depression. Time to look for continuity errors (case in point, this said eras before I checked it!), duplicated words, typos. etc. Best got through as quickly as possible. I'm currently coming to the end of this leg of the journey. Checkpoint 4 is in sight, but I'm not there yet. More's the pity.
Check point 4 - The fastest part - spell check and tidy up of formatting. Make sure you don't have two chapter 3s. Before finally...
Check point 5 - the read-through. Yes, you hate your book by now, but this is really worth it. Either aloud, or like me, some kind software reads it to you. It picks up lines that sound clunky, and typos you missed.
Done. You're there. Offer up your sacrifice and start again.