Yesterday I started in on the second draft of The Novel. What a relief to finally have started. I didn't get very far, but that's because the revisions are heavy. The story evolved a lot in the writing, and the beginning doesn't make much sense with those changes. This meant practically rewriting from scratch the first scene. I'm still not even done with it. I hit a point last night where I could no longer salvage anything from the scene and had started writing completely new scene on the back of the page. I think there's some stuff toward the end of the scene I can salvage, though. We'll see. The next scene, I know for a fact, is completely unusable now, so I'm not going to even bother with it much, except to draw big Xs across the pages.
But I'm excited now. Starting, for me, is always the hardest part of any project (writing or otherwise). But Once I get over that hump, things get a little easier. Slowly, I find myself enjoying the rewriting process. Though I still wish I could do less of it. I still wish rewriting was nothing more than a little spit and polish before sending off the manuscript to get published. Alas, I'm just not that good of a writer. Which means my only hope is in rewriting.
