I was excited to declare my first draft complete earlier this week.
‘Yay! You is done, mang!’
Eh, no… not even close. I spent a lot of time fine tuning the world and scenario, which is a good thing. It will require a good amount of editing to make all the pieces fit into the track, and I’m fine with that.
‘Then, what’s the snag?’
As I was writing my book, I tried to have each character represent different parts of myself. In editing the prologue, the first couple of pages went by just fine. They just needed a little buffing, and attitude and mood change. After that, I completely redeveloped two characters (the protagonist’s friends) which added more to the story. That’s a good thing.
I also ended up adding another character (protagonist’s childhood friend) which will also add more to the story. In my opinion, it focuses mostly on the protagonist’s present self opposed to past, lacking a lot of his personal aspects. In just my first edit, I’m wondering how much additional content I’m going to have; I already find myself adding things I had no intention of adding, things that just whimsically come to me.
I am still working on editing the prologue, actually. Initially, it was about 3,000 words, and now, it’s almost doubled. It’s not that I’m trying to add content just to fill blank space, I’m trying to develop the story, the characters, and the world. If worst comes to worst, I can cut out any empty fluff in a second edit. For now, I will add whatever comes to me and appeal it on second edit.
I do find myself distracted, though. I was excited about editing and polishing up the first draft, but now I keep putting it off. I know it’s going to be a lot of work, but it’s something I enjoy.
‘So, why ‘ya putting it off!?’
I don’t know! This sort of thing always happens to me: I make progress with a big project and I don’t finish it! It drives me crazy. See? I’m using italics! SCARY! And, CAPITAL LETTERS! And booold! Oh no! Exclamation points!!!
Anyhoo, I know I have a work avoidance issues, but this is ridiculous. I asked myself, “Why are you procrastinating?” And, my mind tried to come up with various responses, none of which sufficed: ’Well, I already spent so much time on it. It’s going to be so much working going back and editing it. I burned out on it. It won’t turn out the way I want,’ and so forth.
I pondered various responses, but none of them seemed true.
‘So, why aren’t you working on it right now?’
TOO MUCH ITALICS! …Ahem… I don’t have a good reason. I just get distracted so easily! I know once I get into it, I’ll be excited, though! It will take a lot of work to bind it altogether, but I just have to make it something to look forward to. Hopefully when I post again I will have made progress in editing. In the meantime… Look behind you! A three-headed monkey!
…Darn, that usually works.
