Yeah, that's right. I am AWESOME.
YEAH! FIRST DRAFT!
YEAH! YEAH! --Okay, I'll stop.
Ahem. Anyway.
I'd started drafting DW in 2012, then tried again in 2013, but didn't have a clear sense of where it was going until I did a pile of plotting work this past January. So the bulk of what ended up in the first completed draft happened in 2014, even though the idea has been in my head for far longer.
As it (always) turns out, I have a much better sense of my characters now that the story is on the page. So I've begun Draft 2, tearing things apart line by line. I'm fixing major plot holes and rewriting dialogue for basically everyone in the beginning. I'm combining scenes, switching segments around, hacking out extraneous blabbering, etc. All the typical things you do in the second go-around.
For once, I'm actually not overwhelmed at the revisions that need to be done re: the plot (seriously, my revisions usually involve MASSIVE plot overhauls). This time, in a bizarre twist, I'm feeling pressure because of what this story became thematically. It has a heart to it that I desperately don't want to screw up.
If you'd told me a year ago that my main concern about DW would be the theme and the character growth, I would've laughed in your face. The complex plot was all I could think about in 2014, and now that the bulk of that is sorted out, I have fallen in love with my characters and can only think about doing them justice in future drafts. Funny how that happens.
And now, for a pretty lame attempt at cleverness: DW is a complex beast, and Draft 1 is just the bare bones of this story. The skeleton, essentially. I hope Draft 2 will bring it to life.
(...Maybe someday, when this story is published, people will read the end of this old blog post and smile. Or maybe they'll just wonder how I managed to get published with lines like those.)
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