... I really meant it. It's been about six months since I finished my first draft of Sons of Sinners, and I'm still working on it. I'm on my fourth draft, I believe. I'm not actually sure. Certain parts I've gone back and rewritten dozens of times, and other parts are as they were back in November. It's really a bunch of different parts that have been edited to varying degrees, and they're all sort of jumbled together to make a novel. I'd say on average this conglomeration of story-parts is on its fourth draft.
I've got pages and pages of notes on what I need to work on with SoS. There's a ton that still needs to be done. Six months ago when I finished my first draft-- which I can't stand to read now-- I thought, "Wow, you did it. Look at that finished book, all done and everything. Just gotta fix all the spelling errors and you're good." Well, nope. Not in any way. This book is so different from what the first draft was. It's so much better now. I can't believe I was even remotely happy with what it was before. That first draft was awful. I'm actually embarrassed that I showed that to some people, and incredibly impressed that they were able to actually read the entire thing. I've learned so much about writing in the last half of the year, and I've gone back and applied a lot of that to my book.
I've still got months of work left on it, and I can't wait to see what it becomes.
"Writing is re-writing," and all that.
As a reader of your first draft I'm here to tell you that it was a compelling read. If it's even 'better' now, I can't wait :)
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