Keep Going

Most of you probably already know this, and you’ll agree with me right from the start. Others won’t, which is one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to write on this topic, today. Because we all need to understand it, from the very beginning.

Don’t Write Only One Draft

See? I told you a lot of you would agree with me. But there are still some of you out there who won’t, and for that, I’m going to continue.

First drafts are meant to be not very good. They’re our first efforts to get everything onto the page, to get it all out of our heads and where we can look at it and see what it is, and admire it in all its slimy, bloody glory. But that’s just the thing. It’s intended to be a mess, to be the birth of a crying baby that needs a lot of work before anyone really wants to be in the same room with it. Except, of course, its parents.

But we’re not meant to just leave it at that one draft. It's not meant to stay a baby.

Yeah, I know, when you finish it, it seems like the most beautiful thing in the world and like nothing could possibly be better than this draft, but you’re in the just-finished-my-novel high. And you can’t let that high get the better of you. Your novel needs to be edited, by you. You’ll need to go through it at least once, cut out what doesn’t need to be there, mend what needs mending.

You need a second draft.

A third.

Sometimes a fourth.

Even a fifth.

And I know by then it gets really annoying, and you’re more than ready to be done just so you never have to look at these words again, but this is a very important step. Before you send your work to an editor, before you even consider trying to get it published, you need to get beyond the first draft.

In order to really learn what your story is about, you need to get to draft two. To find out what’s really going on with your characters, you need to get to draft three. In order to get the attention of a publishing house, you should really get to draft four.

But before you get an editor, you should at least get to draft three, in my opinion. Get to where you really know your book, to where you really understand its ins and outs and where you’re getting to the point that you’re just plain done and ready to never read it again. Then, send it to an editor. Let someone else look it over, and let them make sense of it. Because at that point, you’ll probably be unable to spot the errors that are left—and that’s when an editor comes most in handy.

I would know. I’m an editor. And a writer.

[love]

{Rani Divine}