Two Drafts in the Bag
The second draft is done. Bam! I toss my head and smile modestly.
“Why yes, I have finished two drafts of my novel, thanks for asking.”
And you know what? It was torture. I procrastinated again and oh yeah, again. This whole weekend I’ve been futzing around with the CSS behind this site. I’ve never written CSS before, but I learned how to change the background color and paragraph spacing and even put a different color behind my blockquote.
Quoting: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
-Ambrose Bierce
Cool eh? I told myself that all of this was actually productive work. Even if that’s true I know that what I was really doing was ignoring the tidily printed pages of my new last chapter.
Truthfully, the second draft wasn’t even that much of a rewrite. There was a lot of polishing, plugging of plot holes, and patching of awkward paragraphs, but the primary story remains intact. I did have to add a few more scenes to my previously-skimpy last chapter so my word count this time around is a little higher but it wasn’t the work of the draft that was hard.
It was the realization that there is a lot of engineering behind stories. And I don’t include engineering, fiction or otherwise, in my vast list of hobbies. Between my first and second drafts, I found myself almost paralyzed with the idea that there is a structure my story is supposed to adhere to but I don’t know if it does. Or if it matters. I’ve made it through two and a half of my books related to structure and still, I’m not sure how my story fares.
The next step in my book’s journey will be to send it to Alice Sudlow, Editor Extraordinaire. I was introduced to Alice via the 100 Day Book program on the Write Practice. She is a Certified Story Grid Editor and I’m really excited to see how she’ll apply the story grid process to my book. I’ve also been toying with the idea of rewriting the book from another character’s perspective (Oof, I know, I know!) and want her take on that.
As excited as I am to have the second draft done and have Alice manhandle it you want to know what actually drove me to finish this today? You do? Say please.
Louder.
Ok, so here’s the truth. I have another book that I want to write. It’s not in the current series but has been begging me to start working on it since I visited the Queen City. I told myself that I wouldn’t LET myself start on it before finishing the second draft of my current book. And write this post. Mean, right? No. Effective.
Alice can’t look at my current book until June so I have time. To prepare for another book, I’ve bought a new seat cushion for my ratty old desk chair. I want to work on the new book so bad that my skin is itching. I hope Amazon has a cream for that.
Do you have to push yourself to finish your drafts? At what point do you start working on your next project?