XENITH

Because I was left a little uncertain and overwhelmed by my first read-through last week, I decided that I would dedicate my time this week to going through the novel again. Apparently there is a wealth of material that I missed.

On the second read I developed a much better feel for the novel. I was able to get a sense of what it is right now and what it could and should be. I tried to be as critical as possible and because of that almost everything has been flagged as problematic. I’m still feeling a little bit overwhelmed but beyond that I feel aflame with inspiration. I’m able to see more clearly the weak points in the book which will allow me to correct them.

My next major focus will be plot. When I read the novel—especially its middle—I get a nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right, yet I can’t pinpoint it. Even when I look at the outline I have a hard time imagining alternatives or substitutions. As a solution to this, I’ve decided to bust out the index cards and use one for each scene. I plan to write a one or two sentence summary of each scene and provide a list of significant items such as characters involved and possible themes represented. I have an eight-foot dining room table which I will monopolize over the weekend and use as a storyboard. My hope here is that I’ll be able to more easily identify scenes that are out of order, extraneous, or even scenes that are missing.

Once I have the plot figured out I plan to dive into the writing of the second draft. I mentioned before that it might be necessary to rewrite the entire thing and only use the first draft as a guide. I’ve decided this is the only way that I can proceed. The prose is so different between the beginning and the end of the book that the only way to make it consistent is to just start over. It sounds daunting but I’m looking forward to it. I really started to love the process of writing toward the end of the novel (which is where my prose style more or less came to fruition), and I’m sure I will enjoy the chance to craft those early chapters into something more resonant of the design I had in mind. That’s really what I’m looking forward to—altering this raw text into something more in line with what I’d hoped to write, something more powerful. I kind of see it as an entirely new opportunity, except I have a great skeleton with which to start and I don’t have to worry about maddening things like plot points and transitional elements. All those things are already there. This next draft—new scenes aside—is going to be all about the prose.

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