Part of the submission guidelines when I submitted my work for assessment was that only the first 50 pages were accepted. As a result I redrafted those pages, then redrafted again, and again until I was satisfied enough to send them off. I made it to seven redrafts in total. This covered the first three chapters. The rest of the manuscript remained at draft number three.
Now that I am moving ahead and refining drafts with regularity again I have worked through the first three chapters quickly. One major change I made was editing chapter one into two chapters, which has the follow on effect of renumbering all of the chapters. This means that retrospectively I have only redrafted what was chapter one and two. Chapter two is now chapter three... That leaves me at chapter four, which was chapter three and the final chapter in the submission. Once I have redrafted this chapter I will be stepping back into early draft territory.
Factoring in story, characters, setting, imagery, the list goes on, leaves me overwhelmed on top of keeping track of where I am at in the story, with editing and chapter number changes.
To keep moving forward I keep reminding myself that I don’t have to, I get to. That seems to be helpful.
It’s been a while since I’ve muddled through the collection of words that make up the story I am writing. I suspect that there’ll be a lot of work to do. I have put a lot of work into the early chapters – work being: doubt, second guessing, sifting through mental word salad, and navigating storytelling elements.
And so I have reached the next hurdle. It’s looming over my head. I will keep my head down though with my attention on what is before me and a blinkered view on the distraction that the enormity of the task presents.