The Doppelgänger Diaries: The Second Draft

As I promised, I am back with a new installation of The Doppelgänger Diaries. This week, I’ll be discussing the emotional process I went through to get my second draft done. Perhaps I should start with the quote that got me through this: Writing is re-writing. 


I did a post on surviving novel re-writes last year. You can read it here (hyperlink) for more tips. That one explained my survival techniques. This post focuses on the emotions involved in the re-writing process. 


As I mentioned in my previous post, I wrote The Doppelgänger without any planning. I took almost a week off after writing the first draft before proceeding to the second one. After a week of overdosing on romance novels and chocolate, I was back in action. I had it all figured out. I would polish the first draft within the week. Then, I’d send it to the editor by 15th December and possibly get the re-writes done by February end. Soon, I realized how unrealistic that was. 


The book was nothing near what I wanted it to be. I took an objective look at my revised first draft and flipped. I wanted to give up. It was an absolute mess. I decided that perhaps this book was not meant to be. Maybe I’m not cut out to be a writer, after all. Every word I read confirmed my feelings. The plot holes were so big that I could jump through them. The character was little more than a cardboard cut-out, the scenes had no structure, there was no climax or thrill. The novel was too short, and a story of that complexity needed a sub-plot and more words to give it depth. As if this overload of faults wasn’t enough, I began reading books on writing. Each book was a nail in the coffin of insecurity- technique, consistency, structure, dialogue-I was failing miserably at getting anything right. 


I told myself to write another book, perhaps one I bothered to plan before I started writing. But, I couldn’t give up on this one. Not yet. All first drafts suck. That’s why there are second drafts. Around this time, I read Jodie Renner’s Fire up your fiction. It was one of the books that helped me whip that sagging story into better shape. I reviewed the book here. The book offered solutions to common problems. 


I began my second re-write the very next day at the pace of 2 chapters/ day. I started from scratch. I wonder why I even wrote the first draft because most of it disappeared by the end of the re-write. I re-wrote almost 70% of the book. The final word count was around 80,000 (79,317 to be exact). I added sub-plots, cut characters and scenes, modified the backstory, and cut useless scenes. I had one hell of a time cleaning that mess up. Almost a month later (January 6th, 2016), I was done with my first major re-write. Phew. 


When I finished the second re-write, I did another ‘happy dance’ and filmed a video of it. By that time, I was already over my tolerance threshold for this story. I can make an endless list of the faults that remain in the second draft but, I’ve decided to draw the line here. The manuscript is now with the editor. 


Overall, despite all that self-doubt, I enjoyed the second draft way more than the first one. By the end of it, I felt more hopeful- enough to keep me going. The bad news is, this is only half of the process. Lots of chocolates, ballads re-writes and hear-tearing awaits me. I’ll go through this cycle all over again and again until I release the book out on 25th March 2016 (keeping my fingers crossed). 


So, there it is- the story of my second draft. The third post in this series will come out in the first week of March since the editor needs some time to check the manuscript and I need some time to re-write it. By then, I should hopefully have the trailers and book cover up on my blog. As always, thank you for your support and thank you for reading through this post. I’ll see you in March with the third installment in this series. Stay happy and productive!
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