Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Excited. Worried. Exhausted. Determined.
He sits and begins — again — editing the final twenty-five pages of the second draft of the novel in progress. The first draft had multiple iterations. This draft has undergone changes and now ‘feels’ better, but he believes another go through, maybe two, will be required.
He has his coffee and is ready to begin again.
The editing continues. He enjoys a pause to celebrate. It’s been almost three months of editing. He’s reached page 500. One hundred remain. Pure blurt, the youngest addition, he expects the final 100 to be the toughest.
Once that’s done, he’ll begin again. At least two more scrubs are needed. Probably more.
He felt like a raiding barbarian as slashed his way through the manuscript. He’d overwritten so much in that first draft, trying to learn the story in all its elements, especially the characters. Now he cut, cut, cut.
Next draft, he would probably need to work on continuity and coherency after all this slashing. But that was for the next draft. He was committed to finishing this one.
He worked on a chapter, again, then again. Boredom sank its teeth in him. He found himself chasing clickbait on the net.
A muse slapped him. “Hey. It doesn’t work. It’s not needed. Delete the chapter, fool.”
Well, there it was. He did so, but saved it as a doc. Just in case.
His backside had landed on the writing seat. Critically, fresh coffee was at hand with its inspirational aroma. Writing yesterday began like he was trying to unlock a rust-infused iron lock. It became an enjoyable and productive session. In a better mood today, he hoped for like success. You could never tell how it would turn out. The important thing was to attack it and get it done, day by day, session by session.
Countdown commenced. Issues such as needing more coffee put the launch on hold once, twice. Finally, the writing day sluggishly took off. He wanted to be done but he wanted this to be good. Work remained before the novel in progress could be considered done or good.
It felt like it was going to a be a long, tedious writing day.
Coffee as cold as the outside cement sidewalks was tasted, accepted, swallowed. Another writing session done. He’d written almost a quarter million words in that first exciting blurt phase. It had lasted about seven months. Everything thought up was woven into the narrative. Now, the cooler, methodical revision segment was upon him. After six weeks, he’d completed almost two hundred pages of revising. Four hundred pages remained. Total word count had been chopped to below 190K.
He’d always known multiple chapters were goners. They were nice placeholders for thought and plotting for a while. Now the story was taking shape. The words were more precious. They had to prove themselves as worthy of belonging.
He’d become pretty good at the blurt stage of fiction. This was about writing like crazy, inviting the muses in and plying them with drink, food, and drugs, getting them to open up and share. Volumes are written about every aspect of the novel from the concept to setting, characters, plot, and arcs. He needed to become better at the later stages of editing, revising, and developing a novel.
Michael Seidel, writer 