Saturday, July 23, 2011

Edits and Rewrites and World-building Oh my

I'm going over OTHERS and I have the second draft blues.
You know, when you look at your first draft and think, This needs soooo much work!  It's crap! Is it even worth it to comb through it?

I know it is worth it in the long run, but it's really difficult now. It's like cleaning out that closet you've been stuffing crap into for years. Everything has to come out and be reevaluated. Some stuff is okay where it was, some stuff you just need to throw out, and some stuff you don't want to look at because there's some emotional attachment and you just don't know what to do with it. Yep, that's where I am now.

OTHERS is a dystopian YA suspense novel. It's far enough in the future to warrant a reconfiguration of the world as we know it. That's where I'm at now: maps, vocabulary, clothing, technology, food, commerce,media, you name it, I have to rethink it.   Since the first draft is more or less a run through of what happens, this treatment will really shape the manuscript into something closer to my vision.   I guess that's the scary part, isn't it? What if it still sucks after the rewrite? But that's fear talking, and I don't want to listen.

So I'll make my maps, think of new terms for ordinary things like coffee, and imagine what a cool kid would look like hundreds of years from now.

I'm doing this!

Keep writing!

C

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