Preemptive Retaliation

So, for the fourth time, I finished the first draft of my novel.

I know that this should make it my fourth draft, but every time I rewrite this thing it comes out hugely different from the iteration that came before it. The first draft was a bombastic affair with explosions and gunshots. The second was a loose adaption of The Big Sleep that wasn’t anywhere near self-aware enough to pull it off. The third was a super short mess where I ended a chapter with WHAT IS HAPPENING CUT TO THE END. They were all unique, and they all needed a lot of work.

This one, the fourth and final first draft, is a convoluted, rambling, inconsistent pile of drivel. But it’s done. It’s a framework, a skeleton in which I can build on and shape, and rework into something resembling a good piece of work. It’s only forty thousand words too so, in keeping with the imagery, I’ll need to flesh it out quite a lot.

I can’t say that I’m too happy with it. I feel as though there’s something not quite right with the story or how it flows, but that is what I will have to work on. I think it was Neil Gaiman who once said, a novel is something that the author doesn’t feel quite right about.

To finish the draft, Mike asked me how many hours I had left on it. If I were to sit down, how many hours of work would it take for me to get to the end of this draft. I tossed the thought around in my head and came up with about six hours. It wasn’t a lot, and he told me to think on that every time I sat and did nothing or played videogames. I finished it in four hours.

I think I’ll use the same technique on this draft. How long will it take to rewrite the whole thing, cover to cover, with much nicer words arranged in a much nicer way? Let’s say fifty hours. Let’s go with fifty hours, and see where that takes us.