Moving From a Rough Draft
It took me six years to get the courage to start writing The Perilous Road to Her, and another two years of writing on and off, as I worked full-time, to complete my first rough draft. Now what?
What I had wasn’t pretty. There were unfinished thoughts, character backstories undiscovered, scenery flourishes needed, plot holes, research gaps and many grammatical errors.
But that was okay. As I shared in last week’s entry, “Writing A First Draft of a Novel”, my goal with my first draft was to simply get my ideas down with little worry about perfection. Now, I needed to do something with the jumble of words I had put together.
I needed to edit.
What worked for me may not work for everyone, or even be an option for everyone. Each writer will want to find a method that works for them. For me, I understood that I needed to avoid the day-to-day distractions of my regular world, and engross myself in the imaginary one I had created. If I tried to edit at home, my brain would start thinking about the dishes, housework, or laundry that needed to be done. I would focus on caring for my family rather than my story. To avoid the distractions, I rented a condo in the mountains for a week and prepared to hunker down for what I called a Writers’ Retreat.
As it was during COVID, I wouldn’t be doing any exploring, which meant I could focus on the task at hand. I found that the beauty and quietness of the small mountain town created a calm inside me. I pulled out the stack of papers, some sticky notes, a pile of pens, and line by line went through the words.
I paced the condo floors as I read out loud what I had written. I used the kitchen island when I needed to stop and make notes, then repeated the process. For 8-10 hours a day I immersed myself in the world I created. It was great exercise!
I looked for:
Sentence structure and grammatical errors.
This was a cursory review. I knew I would need to complete further edits of subsequent drafts so I wasn’t worried about every comma. Ask my editor!
What characters needed further development? For example, what were the backgrounds of the women Olivia would be held captive with.
Plot points which I hadn’t carried throughout the story.
I made a citation either on the page or on a sticky note specific for that chapter. As I read further chapters, I would look back at my notes and find the right place to tie the points together. If I had already tied the point in later, I crossed out my note.
Plot points I had not fully written or fleshed out.
I filled margins and backs of pages as I continued my ideas.
Research - Items which needed further research had their own sticky note for each chapter. For example, the actual ranks of officers in the Toronto Police Service, laws, locations and makes of vehicles.
I would complete the research after the week away. My focal point for the retreat was editing my first draft. Getting hung up on research, for me, at this point would lead me down rabbit holes and eat up my limited time.
As you can see by the picture I was in deep and did it all by hand. Although I had brought my computer along, I didn’t end up opening it the entire time I was on my retreat. It was nice to not stare at a screen!
To prepare for each day I spent my night resting. I watched old movies, by the fireplace, sipping Baileys and mint hot chocolate, munching on popcorn.
After five days, I had gotten through just over half of my manuscript. I still had another week's vacation time booked, so I headed home and continued my edits. This time with life's distractions.
Once I had completed my full review of the first draft, I opened my computer. Chapter by chapter I completed my research and updated my manuscript, creating my second draft. I went through that draft once more, made some final edits and was ready to send it to my editor.
Editing can be where writers get lost. It starts to feel like Neverland, and no one wants to leave. The thoughts “I can make this even better,” “One more rewrite of this sentence/paragraph/chapter,” “Let me find another word for…,” “No one will like it this way” and so on and so forth. The voices in your head can be great at prompting you when a story point may not feel right. But it can also drag down a never-ending path if you let it. My advice; ask yourself:
What is my true intention/goal with rewriting something?
Does it actually need work? Or is the decision fear-based?
Remember: The editor is not expecting perfection when you send it to them. Nor can your expectation be that what you sent to an editor is perfect and will not come back with notes.
Is there anything actually wrong with that sentence? Or have you gotten your intended point across?
Why do you need to change that word? If you use, for example, ‘angry’ a lot to describe emotion, then, yes, get out that trusty thesaurus. However, I would recommend not trying to make a word fancy, or different ‘just because’. For me, as a reader, I then think someone is trying too hard if a simpler word could have been used, and hadn’t been overused previously.
Do I need to change ‘this’ right now, or would I like to discuss it with my editor or beta readers first, then put the work into making it better?
These are only a few questions writers could ask themselves to try and not get lost in Neverland. I visit every now and then and constantly need to remind myself I should only stay for a little while.
Next week I will share my experience working with my editor and my beta readers, as well as the packages I made for each, on my journey to bring The Perilous Road to Her to the next level.
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N. L. Blandford
April 11, 2021
