Three drafts of my WIP: first (in the box), second (blue), and third (clear)
“Thoughts on Reading Through My Novel’s Third Draft and Completing My Fourth Draft at More or Less the Same Time”.
Because that is how it went down.
At the intersection of these two opposing ideas is the place where I wonder whether, at this moment, I’m good enough for traditional publication.
Whether my historical fiction WIP, which I’ve believed in long enough to have now gone through three (soon to be four) drafts, is now good enough to at least pique the interest of a publishing professional, let alone snag and hold that interest for the duration.
And then there were three: first (green), second (blue), and third (clear) drafts of my WIP
Compared to the marathon of completing the second draft of my historical fiction WIP—which amounted to a complete rewrite of a draft written years ago—there was no way, I told myself, that I’d spend another year on draft three.
Or even the better part of a year
Autumn is coming
In my previous post, I wrote about my non-summer.
That is to say, about how, despite having spent all of August away in Nova Scotia, the province of my birth, I passed the duration of it performing three different forms of work in what made for a month’s worth of gruelling 18-hour-days.
And then there were two: first (left) and second (right) drafts of my WIP
The first time I did a complete read-through of my novel, I was terrified of what I’d find.
This time, I was excited as hell.
The reason being because, until recently, I never had a completed, novel-length work in need of revising.
Never being the sort put the proverbial cart before the horse, I always wanted my education in writing to occur in an orderly sequence, comprising only those aspects of which I’d have immediate use. This way of thinking served me well for the past 16 years, less the six of those I temporarily gave up writing altogether.
I’ve done shit all writing-wise since.
And not just a small sample either. I’m hardly one to skimp on either my words or the ideas conveyed with them.
No one has ever accused my writing style of being “spare”. In university, I played the usual word-processor tricks with font size and margins, but in my case it was because my reports were always too long, not too short.
Thirty-one chapters rewritten and accounted for
In not even counting the two months where I purposely did no writing at all, it took an entire year to write the second draft of my historical fiction novel-in-progress, which amounted to a complete rewrite of my first draft.
It took longer to write than the first draft itself, which I completed in 10 months back in in 2005.
Politically, it showed considerable regression in the progress of equality and human rights.
A seemingly inordinate number of notable figures and celebrities passed away, many surprisingly young, which suggests we haven’t come as far in disease prevention, mental health treatment, and drug harm reduction as we may have thought.
A Frame Around Infinity 