Starting the second draft...

[farfromfearless]

... of a project that I have been working on for well over three years now. I set it aside for a number of months so I can get a bit of a break from the story, and hopefully I've come back with a more critical eye for the work.

I have two editors open right now -- the first with my original draft of Chapter One, and the second, a blank screen.

It's scary as hell.

Anyway, all scariness aside, I thought I would share a blog posting from DeepGenre (a blog authored by a collective of published writers). "How to Write a Novel (Part 2) (http://www.deepgenre.com/wordpress/admin/craft/how-to-write-a-novel-part-2)" -- while I've read a number of postings on AW along the same vein, but it was nice to see something outside of AW that re-enforced what many forum members have taken the time to offer up as advice.

This is me procrastinating.

[Erin]

This is great! Thanks for the posting; it's perfect timing. I'm ready to start my 1st revision/2nd draft tomorrow! I hadn't planned on typing the draft from scratch, but I had just read the same recommendation in Noah Lukeman's "The First Five Pages." Now I'm seriously thinking of doing it.

Good luck with your revisions!

[Matera the Mad]

Why two windows? I just save a backup copy (must have twenty sets of those now) and cut away at the original. Well, I do use a second window for temporary rearranging sometimes. Second draft - huh - that's an odd label, because the process just goes on and on. I keep starting to read through and right away Ms. Editor says, "Hey, this is almost the same thing the character said a while back," or, "Eww, that sentence is in the wrong paragraph!" or something like that. I've run out of fingers to count on. I make archival backups whenever I get the notion in case I want to revert or re-insert a scene. Not everything has to be processed as long and obsessively as that, but the longer I go at it the more I find to change, she babbled ramblingly. So... I guess "second draft" would mean whatever it was the first time I had to stop messing around with it to let it rest a month.

[Judg]

Why two windows? Because you actually type it out again. It's amazing how often improvements occur to you as you're typing, which you wouldn't think of just staring at words that are already there.

[farfromfearless]

Why two windows? I just save a backup copy (must have twenty sets of those now) and cut away at the original. Well, I do use a second window for temporary rearranging sometimes. Second draft - huh - that's an odd label, because the process just goes on and on. I keep starting to read through and right away Ms. Editor says, "Hey, this is almost the same thing the character said a while back," or, "Eww, that sentence is in the wrong paragraph!" or something like that. I've run out of fingers to count on. I make archival backups whenever I get the notion in case I want to revert or re-insert a scene. Not everything has to be processed as long and obsessively as that, but the longer I go at it the more I find to change, she babbled ramblingly. So... I guess "second draft" would mean whatever it was the first time I had to stop messing around with it to let it rest a month.

I use a combination of jDarkRoom and PageFour (the later for organizational purposes). In any case, I have the two editors open so the first one (jDarkroom) is clean and clear of anything I've written previously so I'm not tempted to just "go with what I already have". The second window is there for reference so I can understand the context of what was written previously. both jDarkroom and PageFour deal with automatic backup and I also have it stored in a subversion repository so I can save it online if I need to edit it at some other location.

[Birol]

I make archival backups whenever I get the notion in case I want to revert or re-insert a scene.

I have a separate file named Deletions from <WIP title> where I put anything major I cut that I think I might want to use again.

[Willowmound]

I have a separate file named Deletions from <WIP title> where I put anything major I cut that I think I might want to use again.

I call mine "Snipps" :)

[farfromfearless]

This is actually pretty interesting to see people's process -- I'm big on version control, but that's the web developer in me, and I might take it a little overbord, but I like being able to revert back to earlier versions if I have to, or at the very least copy/paste a chunk from an earlier version.

[Birol]

I do save different "versions," too, but that comes when I'm doing major rewrites. Not minor tweaks. A saved "version" is the difference between 1.0 and 2.0. The .1 of 1.1 goes into the deletion file.

[mikeland]

Interesting article. I've just finished a first draft of my WIP. It'll be a bit until I get to the next draft. I have to say that I'm not sure I have it in me to start fresh from a blank page.

I definitely save a new file. And I've never been shy about cutting mercilessly. But actually starting from scratch and typing every word anew -- I don't think I can do it.

More power to those who can. Good luck with your next draft.

[David I]

I think I get the same effect as typing it out by wandering around the house reading it aloud; I typically do this with yesterday's pages before I start writing today's.

This also helps with faulty rhythm, which I'm not sure you get from retyping. But, then, I'm a terrible typist. I'd be faster at carving things onto cuneiform tablets.

[Erin]

I usually save my drafts and major revisions as separate files and have never retyped the whole MS. But then I end up spending so much time revising and editing. But the idea of retyping it sounds appealing in that it may give me a fresh perspective as I type and catch errors and make improvements much faster and easier than going over and over it. I'm thinking of experimenting on the first few chapters to see if it helps.

[Harper K]

I didn't even look at my first draft when I started the second draft of my novel. I mean, I read Draft One (a zillion times) before I started Draft Two, but once I was into Draft Two, I hardly ever went back to open Draft One. There were a few scenes from the first one that got copy-pasted, but that was it. Everything else was new, and it was a much stronger novel for that. Of course*, the plot was still full of huge holes, so a couple weeks after I finished Draft Two, I started thinking seriously about how to go about creating Draft 3.

I did two "drafts" after that that were mostly just tweaking -- changing a line here and a line there. After a while I had to face the fact that "editing" in the same Word file wasn't really editing at all. I envy those people who can really hack up a draft that's sitting in front of them. As for me, I tend to have to go back to the blank page again and again. I'm technically on "Draft 4" right now, but it's not very different from Draft 2. To really fix those plot holes (and at least I know how I'm gonna fix 'em, now that I've been forced to write a synopsis for a conference critique), I'm going to have to open another blank document and start again. The only way I've found for me to rewrite a novel is to truly, well, rewrite the whole darned novel.

Good luck with your second draft!

* = I say "of course" not because most writers' plots would be full of holes after Draft Two, but because I am wretched at plotting and tend to have to go through draft after draft to get all the parts of a plot to work together.

[farfromfearless]

I havebfound that sometimes I am most productive on a new draft if I step away from my laptop and sit down with a pen and steno pad. I struggled last night with the first paragraph but tonight I decided to forego technology and kick it old school :)

I can't wait until later to fire up my text editor now that I actually have something decent to build on.