Why Second Read-Throughs Are So Cool

So I have officially started my second read-through of my manuscript!

I know I haven't blogged in a while, and there are a couple of reasons for that. One is that I recently finished midterm week, so that was incredibly time-consuming. The second reason is that I started writing a new manuscript, and I felt like that deserved priority over blogging.

Now, that isn't to say that I've neglected my completed manuscript. I definitely haven't. I completed my first read-through and performed the necessary edits. 

Which brings me to the topic of this blog post: How is the second read-through different from the first?

The majority of my notes from my first read-through went like this:
1. copy edits / typos
2. deciding if I wanted to use present tense or past tense
3. making sure the story flowed
4. checking story line consistencies and date consistencies
5. looking for plot holes

Now I'm only about a third of the way through my second read-through, but these are the trends I'm noticing:
1. checking to make sure my protagonist's voice is strong
2. making sure the story flows
3. making sure the material I added to fill plot holes after the first read-through is successful and fits the rest of the manuscript

In many ways, the second read-through is far more enjoyable and exciting than the first. The first time, I was reading a raw manuscript filled with errors and inconsistencies. It was almost entirely unedited and it definitely showed. It was fun reading it for the first time all the way through, but it was also exhausting to catch all the many, many errors there were. 

But this time, it's different. It's still far from a perfect manuscript and I still have a long way to go, but it's already been edited a lot. Plot holes have been filled, typos eliminated, timeline inconsistencies eradicated. It's a complete, 80,000+ word manuscript that is a cohesive and well-constructed piece of writing. 

That's why the second read-through is so much fun. I feel like I'm reading what could potentially be a real book someday. It doesn't feel like a first draft anymore because it isn't. It feels real. For the first time in this entire process since I started writing, it actually feels like a book. And that's cool.

So while I continue down the long road of edits, I think this will be a good reminder. My manuscript is for real. It could one day (hopefully) be a real, published book. And that's really encouraging. 

So if you have a completed manuscript, no matter how raw it is, remember that it's an actual completed manuscript. It's a book. And that's pretty legit.

KMG

Writing a Novel is an Accomplishment... Seriously

So today I was scrolling through Twitter (procrastinating on editing), and I saw a quote from  Rose Tremain on the Twitter page +TheUnNovelist .... Great page, by the way, check it out for sure.

The quote was as follows: "The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all." ~Rose Tremain

Let that sink in. It seems simple on the surface, but this quote really blew me away and I'll tell you why. 

I spent about a year seriously focused on writing this manuscript after spending a couple of years casually working on it, after years of letting this idea wander through my brain, developing into a complex story over the years. This has been a long time coming.

And now that it's actually done, I'm consumed by the editing and rewriting process. In some ways, it's just as hard as actually writing, and in other ways it's easier, but it requires a lot of work all the same. 

It's so easy for me, and maybe for some of you, to get caught up in how crappy I feel like my writing is. Oh, this scene is terrible, why is that dialogue so corny, why am I so bad at writing, etc. It's abnormally easy to worry about everything I did wrong and trying to fix it that I forget something so simple:

I wrote a book.

I have a 75,000+ word Scrivener file on my computer that entirely came out of my head, that I painstakingly typed out. 

It's written. It's out of my head and onto paper computer screen. 

And that's an accomplishment.

Sure, maybe that chapter is really poorly written, but it's written. Maybe this manuscript is really disorganized because I refused to outline, but it actually exists to be disorganized. Maybe that character isn't developed well, but that character has been taken out of my head and put into words.

The reason I have all these problems with my manuscript is because I have a manuscript. 

So even though that quote is so simple, I found it exceedingly encouraging.

So if you've written a manuscript, if you've even written just one paragraph of a manuscript, that's something worth celebrating. You conjured a new idea out of your head and put it into words. 

And if that isn't the most legit thing you've ever heard of, I don't know what is. 

Actually writing a manuscript is very impressive. Don't get so lost in your rewriting that you forget that.

KMG