Draft 3 of The Wild is Done
August 12th, 2010Just over a year ago I announced that I wasn’t satisfied with the responses I was getting from readers on my novel-in-progress The Wild, so I was going to undertake yet another revision, primarily of the story opening. Later in the year I talked about the butterfly effect and writing—how the partial revision I’d originally envisioned had turned into a complete re-write of the entire manuscript.
The re-write turned out to be a stuttering, sputtering process, with periods of productivity interrupted by long periods of nothing much getting done. But late in the game things finally started to click. I was suddenly immersed in the process, and completely neglected my other projects, with the happy result that Draft 3 was finally finished yesterday.
Hoorah!
The next step is to send it to a few test readers, to see what sort of reaction it gets. I’ll confess I’m nervous. The last two drafts didn’t fare too well. Let’s hope this one does better!
In the meantime, I get to start something new.
Posted on: Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Categories: The Wild, Writing.
August 12th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Wonderful news, I wish I were further along than Page 45 of this third rewrite of Ginger… so much more than tweaking wording, I’m adding scenes, deleting, moving things forward and back… supposed to be done by Sept 1. Not too likely!
Anyway, congrats and that’s a good feeling while a little apprehensivemaking. I’ve been there! See you Sunday.
August 12th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Being emotionally willing to do big revisions is the trick, at least for me. I think I took so long with this re-write because I didn’t want to throw out my favorite pieces of dialogue or toss scenes that I thought were working very well. I had to get to the point where I was willing to let it all go.
So if you’re at the point that you’re adding, deleting, and moving scenes around, it sounds like you’re well on your way. Good luck with it! See you soon.