Let the redraft commence

Well, redraft time is almost upon us. I've had a couple of mails asking what's involved in the redrafting process, so I thought I'd put a few notes down here.

Basically, the first draft of a novel, for me, is all about story. It's about forming characters and situations and then seeing how they play out. It's about sitting down at the word processor, day after day, and just typing.

Once that's done, the resulting manuscript is basically an unpublishable horror! So it gets put to the side for a month or so while I start working on something else. With my front-brain engaged in the new project, my back brain ponders away, thinking about things like 'theme' and 'symbolism'.

So now that a month has passed, it's time to have a look at what's been written. For me, this is an exciting time. I never look back on the previous day's work, so this first read through of the manuscript is literally that – the first time I've read the whole thing from end to end. While I'm doing this, I tend to jot down some notes and see if the themes and symbols I've been pondering are actually there – sometimes I even find new ones. The novel, at this stage, is just a word document, so I do the first read through on my Kindle.

Next comes the hard bit. Equipped with my little notebook of things I didn't like, things I did like and suggested themes, it's time to attack the manuscript with a red pen. I go through it, one page at a time, correcting typographical errors, marking things for improvement, scoring out superfluous text and highlighting areas where my themes and symbolism can be teased out a little.

With that all done, it's time to go back to the word processor. The first draft has been copied to my 'First Drafts' folder, and the document renamed to second draft. With this done, I set upon it with a vengeance – deleting, rewriting, correcting.

At the end of this process, I should have something approaching a publishable book – so it's time to grit my teeth and send my baby out into the wide-world for my friendly editors to have a go at it. This part is especially nerve wracking as there are no guarantees that what I've written is any good.

So there we are – this whole process will be kicking off tonight. I expect to be very busy over the next few days.