The cool thing about rewriting a first draft is that there are times when you can pull entire scenes from the original that came together well the first time and just slip write into the working version of your novel. This morning was one of those mornings. Very little editing and rearranging left me with 1,528 words added to my "polished" file.
My original draft of this novel was in the 67,000 word range. Early in the rewrite, I was importing lots of material from the first draft. Enough has changed, however, that I've lately been writing a lot of it from scratch. The big thing is that my first draft was missing, "the gun fight" as my husband likes to call it. I had a story, a lot of background. But my story entirely skipped a critical buildup or climax. It was all smooth sailing. And it's not that I didn't try. I worked quite a bit with various circumstances that just never felt real enough, or important enough to me. So in the end, all those bits and pieces were left in various files along the way, and my story was one long piece of day-to-day details without a turning point.
I guess that is the crucial point I am repairing in this rewrite. I'm not quite there yet, but I feel the shape of it forming in my mind and bits and pieces of it are starting to come together on paper. It feels doable. It feels finishable. It doesn't feel like a lot of time, but I'm really going to shoot for this April 1 deadline. Right now, however, I have to get my butt to work. Free time is all up!
"Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you, figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer." -- Barbara Kingsolver
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