Hello All,
A typical second draft is all about the SSSTT -sight, sounds, smells, taste and touch- you know fleshing out the story. This however has turned into complete freaking rewrite. I never expected or anticipated this much of a restructuring of the book. Angel’s Gate, in its first draft was a good, solid story, needed some skin and meat on the bones, but I never thought I would change or expand SO much.
I think part of the reason it’s been so much more expansive is because when I originally started to write the original draft of Angel’s Gate I was a much younger woman. Not just in years but in experiences in life and now when I picked the story back up and decided to continue it into the second book – which I have completed – and a third – which I’ve started – I now have 5 years of experience that I didn’t before. And mostly it’s not the years, but the mileage, as they say, the extent and vividness of those experiences. I went through certain experiences that changed me. I’ve also changed in my perspective of who I am as a woman and how a woman should behave and react, so my heroine has completely changed who she is because of that. And my hero has changed who he is and the adventure itself has changed since my expression of life and how I view things has also changed.
So instead of just being a bump up of new, or just fleshing out of the story, it’s become a complete rewrite, to tell a whole new story. I’ve basically just taken the kernel of the idea I was trying to express, but as a younger person I didn’t have the skill to do justice to it. So now, I have some more skill and hopefully will be able to capture more of what I wanted to express, because I’ve lived more and experienced more.
I didn’t realize how much I had changed as a person and as a woman until I started doing the rewrite on the second draft of Angel’s Gate and I am really happy with the changes in myself that I see and the changes in the story and the direction that is taking.
True, it’s taking much longer to finish, I’m way off the deadline I had set for myself, but I believe the results will be so much more worth it.
Well, until the next time I sit behind this keyboard….
L
