We are, after much feet-dragging and time-wasting on my
part, officially in third draft territory...
And even though it’s 12:24pm and I
just answered the front door, still wearing my pyjamas with, as it turns out,
one or two ink-stains around my mouth from anxiously chewing at my scribble-pen
so much, I feel like I’m in pretty good shape. Although I can see why that
opening description might make you think otherwise – and I can fully understand
the postman’s, ‘Oh,’ when he looked up and saw me. For a second I thought I
should probably explain myself but I landed torn between, ‘Sorry, I’m doing a
PhD,’ and, ‘Sorry, I’m having a minor breakdown,’ because the two things feel
somewhat synonymous at the moment. Instead, I opted for a, ‘Thanks, have a good
day,’ which seemed just about normal enough to redeem me from my tartan attire.
So here we are, third draft territory. It’s not a bad
place, really. In fact much of my time here is made up of drinking tea, eating
crumpets, and wondering why the edit feels okay this time. When I started
thinking about third draft issues, you see, I went back to the drawing board –
literally – and worked up some monster timelines for the book.
Timeline One: The whole book, chapter by chapter, including
a one-sentence synopsis of all chapters present.
Timeline Two: The chapters that feature a certain couple of
characters – because their sub-plot needs to be refined in this draft –
including a single-sentence synopsis for the chapter as a whole and between
three and five bullet points for what needs to be fixed in that chapter.
And...
Timeline Three: The chapters that feature a certain quality
that my protagonist has – I can’t be more specific, please accept my apologies –
including, again, a single-sentence synopsis for the chapter as a whole and,
again, between three and five bullet points detailing what needs to be
addressed.
These timelines sit neatly alongside the mass annotations
that my supervisor provided and the ones that I have also added to the
manuscript since it was returned to me some weeks ago.
Admittedly, some chapters are taking much more work than
others; their content is tricky, they’re very closely tied with other chapters,
which causes continuity issues all over the shop as soon as a couple of minor
changes are made, and I’m left wondering whether I’ve actually ironed out the
issue or whether I’ve just tweaked the writing a bit. And, with that last
concern rattling around with some enthusiasm this morning, I took a big step
back and reminded myself of something: This is the third draft.
Don’t worry, I’m not so out of touch with my surroundings
that I can’t even work out which draft I’m on these days. What I mean is – the writing
should be okay. It should be polished and it should be in better shape and the
edits should be slightly more manageable chiefly because this book is better
than the last version of it that I edited, and secondly because I literally
have lists of what needs to be done to make this book better – there is no, ‘What
should I be doing?’ but rather a whole load of, ‘Let’s do that and swap this
and fatten that out slightly.’
For someone who is still in her pyjamas at the time of
writing this, I feel like I sort of know what I’m doing (wow, that nearly
sounded confident). There will be days, God knows there will be days, when the
book is beating me down – but after a couple of weeks of feeling like it’s
beating me down (which is, as most people who know me can verify, the first
part of my editing process) I feel like I have tentatively turned the corner
into a new space, again.
I am deeply concerned that I am not making enough changes,
yes; that the sub-plots are still not polished enough, perhaps, and that the
relationships these characters share may still not be as clear as I need them
to be. But I am also trying to remind myself that this is an okay book with an
okay plot, and that I don’t need to move the earth or make a deal with the
Devil to make the third draft work – that was the for the second draft – but
rather, I need to follow my gut, spend a little more time with my characters, and
make sure that they sit comfortably inside this plot that I’ve put together for
them – because they are, after all, going to spend the rest of their fictional
lives there.
Right now I’m editing Timeline Two. I have a checklist of
chapters to get through and, moving through them at a three-a-day pace, I’ve landed
myself with four chapters left (for tomorrow afternoon, all being well), and
then I will repeat this process for Timeline Three. After that I’m going to
back it up and put it away for a week before doing a general sweep edit across
the whole thing, and then I’ll be packing it off to someone and returning to my
critical work just in time for the new year – or maybe even Christmas, if I’m
(un)lucky. That’s probably the time when the next wave of panic will kick in,
but until then, if you need me, I’ll be drinking tea and eating crumpets with draft three...
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