by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Just as I thought I was going to push into the beginning of the second act of the third draft of my first novel, I made a strategic error — I decided to read over what I had done so far. As always, always happens whenever I do this, I discovered a new, improved way to tell the story to the point that I am rewriting everything all over again.
My heroine kind of looks like this woman in my mind. Sorta. Kinda.
Some of this rewriting was inevitable — I know I can do better and I given that I consider this the THIRD draft of the novel, I feel compelled to make sure I can produce the absolute best quality copy. I hope to show this draft to some sort of professional manuscript consultant and I would rather do the hard work of rewriting now, rather than waiting until the end.
One thing that I really need to work on is fleshing out my characters. They’re getting a lot — A LOT — better, but they’re still not where I want them to be. I keep mulling the idea of maybe yet another attempt at a character study of my main characters so I can get a better sense of who they are.
But I don’t know if I’m prepared to slow the already slow process down THAT much. I do, you know, what to wrap this third draft up soon enough that I can start to query in late 2024. Which, of course, is when I think we might experience the so-called “Fourth Turning.”
Lulz. Good times!
