A bit of spit and polish
I'm finally nearly at the end of the latest draft of The Crooked Man. After a couple of drafts that went the wrong way, this one is the final major reworking one.
After this, it will be down to polishing drafts, one of my favourite stages of writing. All the hard work of dreaming up new settings and characters and untangling difficult plot problems is done (in theory) and it's just about tweaking the language, deleting unwanted copy and generally improving everything. It's such a satisfying feeling gradually editing out the bits that don't work and polishing those that do until what you're left is something that's rather better than you hoped, although still not as good as you dreamed.
In fact, the real trouble with the polishing stage is that it can go on forever! One of the main reasons I finally took the plunge and self-published The Day The Earth Caught Cold online was because I couldn't leave it alone. I was forever fiddling around with it when I was supposed to be working on something else. Now I can't.
Of course, the polishing stage is still hard work. TCM has characters whose plot arcs dwindle away to nothing. It has clues that appear out of nowhere and logical gaps that the characters can fall through. All of that needs fixing. But it's so much easier to fix when you have the entire novel in front of you, rather than still a question-mark where the end should be.
After this, it will be down to polishing drafts, one of my favourite stages of writing. All the hard work of dreaming up new settings and characters and untangling difficult plot problems is done (in theory) and it's just about tweaking the language, deleting unwanted copy and generally improving everything. It's such a satisfying feeling gradually editing out the bits that don't work and polishing those that do until what you're left is something that's rather better than you hoped, although still not as good as you dreamed.
In fact, the real trouble with the polishing stage is that it can go on forever! One of the main reasons I finally took the plunge and self-published The Day The Earth Caught Cold online was because I couldn't leave it alone. I was forever fiddling around with it when I was supposed to be working on something else. Now I can't.
Of course, the polishing stage is still hard work. TCM has characters whose plot arcs dwindle away to nothing. It has clues that appear out of nowhere and logical gaps that the characters can fall through. All of that needs fixing. But it's so much easier to fix when you have the entire novel in front of you, rather than still a question-mark where the end should be.
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