After the First Draft--the end of a romance
Hello fellow writers. Well, last night I finished the first draft of a young adult novel I've been working on and the printed pages are sitting in the middle of the dining room table. And, while I love looking at the tidy stack, I'm terrified to actually read it. All workshop wisdom says to let it sit in the drawer for awhile, but we don't have the luxury of time (I wrote this draft based on an idea my husband came up with about fifteen years ago and couldn't sell.) YA is suddenly very, very hot, we have an agent who is anxious to see it, these are problems we've wanted all our lives. But I don't want to lose the glow of having written 250 pages. I don't want to be confronted with paragraphs of leaden prose, and my horrible addiction to adverbs. So, if any of you have advice for how you approach rewriting, please send me a lifeline!
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Craig Lancaster on -
Hi, Kim ...
I love rewriting. I've never immediately launched into it (I've generally waited a week or two, just to let everything cool down), but if you're going to ...
* Try, as much as you can, to read it as a reader would, especially with an eye on needless exposition, wordiness and loose ends. Be brutal. I tend to bleed all over second drafts.
* Have someone you trust read it and give you actionable feedback (i.e., suggestions on where it can be improved, not just a diagnosis of what's wrong).
* I pay a lot of attention to fatty verbs (e.g., "was hoping" goes, "hoped" moves in). It's amazing how much my stuff streamlines when I whack those.
I hate to seem opportunistic here, but as it turns out, I *just* blogged about this topic at The Blood-Red Pencil. For what it's worth: http://bloodredpencil.blogspot.com/2010/03/craig-lancaster-loves-wh...
Best of luck! Though I'm neither young nor act like an adult, I hope I get a chance to read it.
Best wishes,
CL -
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Permalink Reply by Kim Anderson on -
Thanks Craig! Looking forward to your reading Friday night at F&F
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Permalink Reply by Ken Egan on -
Hey, Kim, I'm about to begin rewriting the novel based on my great grandfather's emigration from Ireland. I've got 200 pages in the can and it's time to begin from the beginning (yes, I'm trying to take advantage of knowledge and sensations gleaned in Ireland). I'd appreciate your thoughts on rewriting based on your own successful reworking of the novel. Craig's suggestions seem apt--did they work for you? I'd also benefit from thoughts (and yes, encouragement) from everyone about the sheer discipline of composing--I have a day job, of course, and often get distracted by new reading or old films. How did you (and others) sustain your writing momentum to produce that much-desired second draft?
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