I'm a little over fifty pages into the rewrite of my second middle grade novel "Magic Man". It took me this long to warm up to the task since by the end of last November, I was about as sick of my manuscript as an author could be. But I forced myself to finish the first draft, made a few feeble attempts to start the rewrite, then chucked the whole thing aside for seven months.
And you know what? It worked! As I'm going through the text of what I knew was an absolute piece of poo, I'm delighted to discover that it's actually pretty good. No really! The story pretty much makes sense, dialogue is fairly crisp, the funny parts are more or less funny, and the action sequences border on being exciting -- all the kinds of things I can fix during the editing part of the program. That's what rewriting is for, after all. Very cool.
I've often read that you should give yourself a bit of time before jumping into a rewrite -- to clear your head and let things settle down -- but who knew the suggestion actually worked?!
“Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.” -- C.S. Lewis
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2 comments:
Sometimes I have to stop writing for months and just make music to clear my head! It's like, when you stop the flow for a while, a huge stream gushes out when you finally uncap it.
I agree. I've also been reading more than usual as of late and I know that always gets the wheels spinning. I feel more positive, alert, and creative when I've just crunched through a good novel. Not sure why that is, but I like the feeling.
With Magic Man, not thinking about it at all since December allowed me to approach it refreshed. It also helped me realize that I can trust my base level of writing a little more than I was doing at the end of the first draft.
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