A month into the new year already? I recently completed the first draft of a novel called The Second Chance Man and started editing it. My editing process is brutal, as I think I’m overly critical of my own writing. Most of the time, I find myself picking over a first draft several times before I go in and complete minor rewrites of areas in the manuscript in need of the most work.
With this latest book (possibly due to the amount of time it took to complete the first draft), I feel the need to scrap the current text and do a complete rewrite. So many things about the manuscript got under my nerves as I attempted to perform the edits. My own writing forced me to grimace, groan and grind my teeth.
My style of writing, especially fiction, has evolved rapidly over the past two or three years, and it’s for this reason that the total rewrite is the best option.
The ideas and themes of the manuscript are solid, but I must admit the writing is less than polished. The total rewrite (and the resulting second draft) should fix that problem.
