Reading Over First Drafts

Cringe worthy? Definitely!

Currently I am spending my hours dedicated to writing, reading over the first draft of my manuscript. Wow, is it ever a mammoth job?!

My method also involves a bit of less structured writing. As I'm reading over the chapters of my manuscript I have another document open writing down the summary of the chapter as well as anything I think deems changing.

Before this I had done a similar version of reading over the draft with my lovely mother who has taken the time out of her busy days to read my manuscript. Printing off each chapter once a week or so, Mum would go through it and then I would read any of her comments - generally grammar and spelling errors - and then add in my own. The majority of the time I found that whilst there might be a whole page free of her edits, I would usually find a whole host of things wrong with that page.

Two things I learnt from this: 1) I thought that once I had written my novel from front to back that I was ready for another reader and 2) Although it is handy to have Mum read it as she loves reading and can tell me if its boring or not, its not the same as having a Beta Reader.

Now that I'm heading back to read over the chapters again the notes I'm writing would possibly be very offensive if this was someone else's work. The chapter that I'm working on, Nine, when I wrote it for some reason I seemed to loath writing anything descriptive. Therefore I've written myself many annoyed notes telling me that no matter how much I wanted to write this part quickly it doesn't excuse having sections with only dialogue.

This exercise has made me learn that I will probably have many drafts before I think my work is even ready enough for a Beta Reader, then they'll probably strip it down again, and I won't even go into what an editor or agent or publisher will say when the time comes for them.

Writing is definitely a journey, and its no easy one. Sort of like Frodo's journey in The Fellowship Of the Ring. At Rivendell everyone acknowledged that something had to be done, but only few attempted it, and of those who attempted it some got lead astray, some perished and some, not matter how much they wanted it got left behind.

To me, the feeling I'm getting, after finishing this draft and then reading it over it only to realise just how much there is left to go, is that this is the moment when you find out whether you want to really be a writer. Each time you finish the massive task of writing a draft and then recognising that in a few weeks after you've let it sit you'll have to take up that pen and do it all again, hopefully for the better, I think it takes passion and willpower to keep going.

Therefore I'm going to take the end of this post to commend and applaud everyone who has kept going, whether they are published or not.

"You need only take one step at a time, but the main thing is to keep going."