Second Draft
I’ve been spending some of my spare time working on the second draft of (one of) my novels. I took a look at both of them and decided that at the moment there’s a lot of work needed on the other one so I’m editing the hell out of one and letting the other simmer until I have a lot more time to go at it with a red pen.
I think it was Stephen King who said in ‘On Writing’ that writing the first draft is 30% of the job, and editing is the last 70%. Now that I think about I may have gotten the percentages wrong, but I know it’s some ridiculous difference like that. (It may be 20 / 80.) Anyway I’ve started and have the first five chapters in a folder I like to call ’second draft’ (funnily enough.) Of course there are 27 chapters in the book, not to mention the plot holes that litter the story like something Wile E Coyote bought from the Acme company and didn’t bother to use. So basically still a lot of work to go. I’m hoping that by the time I get this draft finished I’ll be happy enough with it to ‘write with the door open’ and get some feedback from readers.
Now readers are hard to come by. Good readers I mean. People who I can trust to actually read the stuff I send them and give me back proper, honest criticism. People who can spot the plot holes I haven’t plugged properly, or question the motivation of a character. NOT people who send me back 20 pages of incorrect punctuation and mispellings. Proofing will be done as I go along and then one final proof before it goes out to any possible publisher. There is nothing worse than sending out a 300 page manuscript to a ‘reader’ who returns it with comments like
‘This is really good! Wow! But on page 20 you misspelled ’severence’, hope this helps!
Well no, actually that doesn’t tell me anything. What it does tell me is that you are either
a.) too scared to tell me what you really think
b.) you didn’t read it except to glance over it
or c.) you don’t actually know what you are doing
Recently I submitted a piece to a magazine and before I sent it out asked someone to read it for me. They had professed interest in reading some of my stuff and promised faithfully to provide feedback and criticism. Three weeks later and there was still no response. (It was only a short piece, about a thousand words.) Eventually I had to tell the person not to bother and had someone else read it for me and provide feedback. Needless to say this person is now off my ‘readers’ list.
It sounds harsh looking at it written now, but yes there is a certain amount of responsiblity on the part of the reader. A lot of people think it’s just a bit of fun and sure ‘I’ll have a quick read of it before I meet Eli.’ When in actual fact I’m expecting you to sit down with a red pen and use it flagrantly. I don’t mind, I’m precious about my words, but not that precious.
Anyway, that’s enough waffle for today. Next task: figure out how the hell I got from a first person narrative to a storyline 20 years in the past.
