Last weekend I finally printed it out and read it after six weeks of waiting.

Was it a good thing to have waited? Yes. I think so. Right at the end of writing it I was feeling very fatigued, very anxious and desperate to get it done. I can’t imagine just waiting a day or two and then going back to it.

I guess my biggest surprise out of waiting several weeks to read it was this: some of the things I was sure had to be pure Velveeta, that I added in the hopes of clarifying some things in the plot line, actually didn’t bother me in the reading. Really, the most I can say about my draft is that it reads just like a book. I really loved the one character right from the start (there are two leads in this tale). But it was the second character, the one that was harder to get to know who really moved my heart at the end. It kind of sneaks up on you.

So, now I am into editing. Editing is hard because in a manuscript so big, its hard to know where to start. I have discovered that in some ways, what I have here is an 84,000 word outline. Each paragraph is really a bunch of topic sentences. So I’ve just begun to rewrite. I copy and paste a scene into a new document and rewrite. Erasing behind me as I go. It’s funny. I equate it to pouring color over top a greyscale underpainting. It’s so much more vivid in this version, built on top of the solid foundation.

However, that’s not to say that there aren’t major changes to be made, because there are. That is the hardest of all in terms of editing. The big scene shuffling, nuance adding things. I could think myself to death before I even started. No, somehow you just have to find a way to jump right in. So it’s a two stage editing process. In one stage, things that I know will stay the same, I rewrite a new draft from. For the over all big picture plotline thinking–I am trying to summarize the story with different turns in the plot.

Trying to say no, where in the current plot I’ve said yes–just trying to see what changes would happen. Today I discovered saying no to a particular plot point takes a powerful symbol away from one of my characters. It’s kind of interesting, this process of story making. So much work. And I’m not doing it for money. Could someone pay me enough for this kind of work? Only if I get faster. Right now I’m still learning, still having to do things over. Try new methods. Just keep going. Maybe someday it will be easier. Less dire. Less serious. Next time its going to be something whimsical.

are very difficult to write.  And almost as difficult to write about unfortunately. It’s a spot in the outline of the story that looks deceptively simple and yet it wraps up a very important story thread. It is a major conflict for my character. The defining conflict for her and somehow it got pushed to the side in development.

So, here I struggle. Trying to push through it and partially writing around it, hoping that in a redraft I’ll be able to tighten it up and make more sense of what is really going on. Don’t think it isn’t hard to to do that though. In the effort to continue forward I’ve moved on to the next big scene which flows directly from the action partially unwritten, and having trouble with that as well–the details of conversation, the logical argument and refutation of said argument nearly impossible to get a right feeling for. I feel certain measure of despair to have worked out so many other complicated issues and end the last chapters of my draft like this.

Here is where true faith comes in. It’s a moment of small crisis for me personally. I feel that it is not insurmountable by any means, but I have to trust that it’s okay not to quite have things tightly in focus. For here I am then at the second of the last four chapters. I shall make a sloppy mess of it and be relieved, for the last two chapters I do have a solid feel for, down to the very last words.

I have just four chapters left. Everything feels pretty good, especially for my characters. I think they are ready for the end as well: prepared, with a feeling of “rightness.” I’m supposing about 10-15,000 words more or so and a finish in early January.

After that, a month or two in the deep freeze–if I can–before I take a first real look at the manuscript as a whole. I’ve described the first draft to be very similar to the “safe start over point” in a painting. That’s the place where the hard and ugly work is finished. You’ve checked all the proportions. You’ve blocked in the values and the colors. After this, the line drawing comes off and the refinement begins.

That’s pretty accurate a thought for a rough draft. All the really hard ugly work is over. But the difference is, you are just beginning to check the proportions and the values and the colors. Close to refining, like one step before. A set of edits need to be made after the first draft before you can refine, I do believe. Structural edits, before the real refinements of prose and rhythm, character and description, tension and mood, symbolism and theme. I’m worried about plot, plausibility, emotional logic–the things I consider to be that underlying structure. The rest is the butter cream roses on top of the cake.

I wholly expect another six to seven months in editing. It sounds ridiculous to read that–and I think I may be conservative in that estimation, but perfectly reasonable on my time line. It took roughly 7 months to write this current manuscript. That’s about my average for a first draft–remember, this is my second storyline written for this project. Two in 14 months.

I’m working almost everyday. Habit now. One that I miss when I’m not doing it. So, another half a year with my characters sounds lovely, actually. It’s going to need that level of attention to detail. And I have the time, at least I suppose that I do. We can never be sure, but I do hope. My next post on this topic ought to be the one where I say I’m finished.

Yes, one year of working on my book project. Three full handwritten journals of story, two for editing and notes, 221,000 words on the word processor and a 60,000 rough draft still unfinished.

An epic amount of work for a simple little story, one that I thought would be done by now–at the very least well into editing. But it’s okay. I finally found work for which I have passion. I’m willing to spend whatever amount of time it takes to make it happen. But, I am surprised to discover there is a trade off for passion like that–suddenly I find myself thinking that I can’t live without it. I’ve been on hiatus for several weeks now and I’ve been a wreck without work to keep me stable and focused. I thought this was my one and only story ever. Well….I guess we’ll just have to see.