the joys of a second draft

so i’m at a stage of my second draft. my second stage if want. my first involved going through my scenes and re-arranging them, then deleting a bunch and then writing more scenes to fill some of the gaps.

now i’ve printed it and am halfway through making notes. i’m finding so many little errors that its difficult to not go onto my document and change them right that second. but i also know that on some level i’m quite confused as to what is happening when as i’ve changed my order from the first draft to what it is now. however, i am finding it incredibly helpful that i printed it out. so much easier to make notes and i’m finding myself seeing errors i would have missed on my computer.

the other difficult prospect is the fact that i want to start the next stage of my second draft which will be taking my notes (and believe me there is so much blue ink on my pages!) and my document and merging the two together and applying all of my notes. as i read i’m marking where chapters might work

so its going along well, but, its so sloooow. to help me work along i’ve set myself some deadlines. i’ve found 3 contests i want to enter. one mid july where they are looking for novels to be made into a movie or tv series (aiming for the movie!) and two at the end of july for novels that win a publishing contract. plus an old friend of mine has offered me her services as she was an editor in her younger years so i need to get my second draft to her by end of june! so write, write write!

i think for me right now the hardest part, as odd as this may sound, is trying to write when i’m not at work. now that i have a printed copy of my manuscript and am doing notes on it, it is much easier to do this at work and some show tracks i run i am quite productive! the other perk is my best friend who is helping me with my novel whined a lot until i figured out how to use schrivner to make an ebook so now he’s reading it and its so cool to wander around work and see him on his ipad reading it! absolutely crazy awesome!