I finished the rewrite of my novel today. Two Mondays ago when I told myself that the rewrite of the novel would be finished by the end of March no matter what, I figured I’d be stumbling across the finish line on the 31st with just a few hours to spare, especially at my pace toward the end.
Then came the days where I had a lot of prewritten scenes from the first draft that could be entered in the new novel with just a few changes, or the days where the scenes that wrote themselves, or the days where I was lucky enough to have both of these. This was probably why my NaNoEdMo hours increased more slowly toward the end.
There were also the days when I would fall asleep at the keyboard, play with my hair and notice that I was losing hair while writing, and wonder why I was rewriting a piece of crap into another piece of crap in the first place. That’s what the second draft is for. The first draft is to get the story on the paper. The second draft, no matter how much or how little it resembles the first draft, is for getting the story in line. I think I’ve done that. I did a better job at it than with the first draft, anyway.
The second draft is shorter, probably because I kept running out of steam; it’s a good 20,000 words shorter than the first draft. When you consider that I will be adding more to this draft and that I cut 10,000 words between drafts, this is unsurprising and probably a good sign.
Let’s worry about that later. The next few days will be devoted to rereading and noting more things that need to change and planning for Script Frenzy, which starts on Thursday.
Woohoo, I finally finished a second draft!