Back in May, I finished my first draft of a novel that I had been working on for years. It felt amazing. And then I remembered I had a lot of work still ahead of me. My excitement didn't last long as I made plans to reread and revise my first draft.
I generally find the process of revising fun and invigorating, however I'm used to revising short stories. I have very little experience revising novels. I wrote one novel when I was a teenager, and then rewrote it as I typed it up, editing along the way. And while it was a completed novel that I did revise somewhat, I still consider that version my first draft. A complete rewrite is in the works for that novel, so I'm basically writing a second first draft.
But, back to my current novel. The first draft has a lot of promise, but as it took me years to finish and my original outline was light on details, I knew that there would be a lot of holes and inconsistencies to repair. That was to be expected, but I was not fully prepared for how much revising I'd need to do. I thought that I would set the book aside for a month or two, per Stephen King's recommendation in On Writing, and then come back and reread it and jump right into revising. As I read my draft, I marked up my printed copy and took about 20 pages of notes of things to rethink and flesh out. Reading through my story took a little longer than I thought, but I was excited by the new ideas that were flowing to fix the plot holes and issues I was finding.
I took a couple month break to focus on making goods for a fall craft fair. As a mother of a toddler, it seems my free time can only be devoted to one hobby at a time. Now that my crafting season is over, I can settle back into author mode, but I have found that all the notes I left myself are quite overwhelming. As I typed them out, I organized them all into categories, and I realized that even my notes sometimes contradicted each other. At times I had resolutions for problems I found, and other times I just told my future self, "figure this thing out." So now I find myself in a battle against analysis paralysis.
I have so many ideas to explore for my second draft that I don't know what to tackle first. Many of them are intertwined, and I fear that if I go in one direction, that will change the path of something else that I wasn't planning to change. It's like all my thoughts and ideas are one tangled mess in my mind, and I don't want to make the knots worse by following the wrong thread or pulling too confidently at another. I know this is similar to the feeling that comes with writing a first draft. There are always those moments where I think, "this is horrible" or "what am I even doing?" But I know that progress is made one word at a time. A novel's first draft will never be perfect, and the second draft won't be perfect either. In fact, I may never have a perfect story, but I can strive for the cleanest and most polished version I can produce with my skill set. It's just getting myself moving toward that finish line that's challenging right now.
I enjoy revising. I love playing around with words and reading sentences over and over until they're perfect. However, I'm nowhere close to that type of revision yet. With a novel, especially one of fantasy and science fiction (because for some reason my story must have elements of both) and even real natural science, there is a lot to analyze and perfect. I now know that my revision timeline was too aggressive; this will take much longer than I thought. And now I must face head on the challenge of analysis paralysis and take my second draft one step at a time. Like with my first draft, I have to be okay to make mistakes and create more or bigger plot holes. With time and care, I can tackle each problem bit by bit. After all, writing is a journey, and sometimes the most memorable journeys are ones with plenty of challenges to overcome.
I generally find the process of revising fun and invigorating, however I'm used to revising short stories. I have very little experience revising novels. I wrote one novel when I was a teenager, and then rewrote it as I typed it up, editing along the way. And while it was a completed novel that I did revise somewhat, I still consider that version my first draft. A complete rewrite is in the works for that novel, so I'm basically writing a second first draft.
But, back to my current novel. The first draft has a lot of promise, but as it took me years to finish and my original outline was light on details, I knew that there would be a lot of holes and inconsistencies to repair. That was to be expected, but I was not fully prepared for how much revising I'd need to do. I thought that I would set the book aside for a month or two, per Stephen King's recommendation in On Writing, and then come back and reread it and jump right into revising. As I read my draft, I marked up my printed copy and took about 20 pages of notes of things to rethink and flesh out. Reading through my story took a little longer than I thought, but I was excited by the new ideas that were flowing to fix the plot holes and issues I was finding.
I took a couple month break to focus on making goods for a fall craft fair. As a mother of a toddler, it seems my free time can only be devoted to one hobby at a time. Now that my crafting season is over, I can settle back into author mode, but I have found that all the notes I left myself are quite overwhelming. As I typed them out, I organized them all into categories, and I realized that even my notes sometimes contradicted each other. At times I had resolutions for problems I found, and other times I just told my future self, "figure this thing out." So now I find myself in a battle against analysis paralysis.
I have so many ideas to explore for my second draft that I don't know what to tackle first. Many of them are intertwined, and I fear that if I go in one direction, that will change the path of something else that I wasn't planning to change. It's like all my thoughts and ideas are one tangled mess in my mind, and I don't want to make the knots worse by following the wrong thread or pulling too confidently at another. I know this is similar to the feeling that comes with writing a first draft. There are always those moments where I think, "this is horrible" or "what am I even doing?" But I know that progress is made one word at a time. A novel's first draft will never be perfect, and the second draft won't be perfect either. In fact, I may never have a perfect story, but I can strive for the cleanest and most polished version I can produce with my skill set. It's just getting myself moving toward that finish line that's challenging right now.
I enjoy revising. I love playing around with words and reading sentences over and over until they're perfect. However, I'm nowhere close to that type of revision yet. With a novel, especially one of fantasy and science fiction (because for some reason my story must have elements of both) and even real natural science, there is a lot to analyze and perfect. I now know that my revision timeline was too aggressive; this will take much longer than I thought. And now I must face head on the challenge of analysis paralysis and take my second draft one step at a time. Like with my first draft, I have to be okay to make mistakes and create more or bigger plot holes. With time and care, I can tackle each problem bit by bit. After all, writing is a journey, and sometimes the most memorable journeys are ones with plenty of challenges to overcome.
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