Today I completed the 2nd draft of chapter two, and I have three people reading to give me feedback which is three times more than I had for my 1st draft. The word count is dropping as I slash away superfluousness with a flurry of backspacing, and I’m now frowning half as much when I read back over what I have written.
My love of words has taken a turn from wanting to keep them all to trashing every attention stealing syllable that could distract from story, narrative, or the focus of a reader’s imagination. After many years of adding more words, more ideas, and more story it’s time now to start taking away.
So, my writing journey seems to have shifted from the words to the numbers.
Getting it all out and getting it all down has worked a treat for me with room to play with my words on this second pass of my work. To do this I have made copies of my 1st drafts and named them as 2nd drafts so that I can edit away indiscriminately with only the story in mind while still having my 1st draft copies untouched.
The other main focus while writing the 2nd drafts is to restructure each chapter with an idea that I have for story formatting to assist with the flow between characters, settings and story stages – well, that’s the plan.
I can feel a new rhythm setting in now that I’m into 2nd draft territory and it is a relief. As I reached the end of my 1st draft journey I was beginning to feel disconnected from my work, I felt a kind of creative limbo caught somewhere between nearly done and ready to begin again afresh.