As many of you know, I have a novel I wrote in college called Laura Horn, and that it’s about time I edited it. At the same time, I wasn’t sure if I should simply go over the first draft and edit where necessary, or do a complete do-over and rewrite the novel from scratch.
If you don’t know what Laura Horn is about, it follows a teenage girl with a dark past who comes across secrets that threaten the nation. Think White House Down or Olympus Has Fallen, only instead of Channing Tatum or Gerard Butler coming to save the day, it’s all on a very troubled teenage girl and her friends. Yeah, I wrote a novel like that. And it’s not comedy, YA, romance or anything like that. It’s a straight up action thriller, complete with one or two psychopaths and a bunch of corrupt agents and elected officials.
Also, I’ve limited the amount of gun violence and explosions in the book, because God forbid this thing should resemble a Michael Bay or Quentin Tarantino movie.
Back to the main point, though. In between drafts of the story, I began to worry that LH might need a rewrite. I liked the characters, I liked the story, I just worried that the way the story was being told was a little too unbelievable and that there might be a better way to tell it. At the same time though, I wondered if maybe the story I had already told was still good enough, it just needed a touch up here and there.
So after editing Video Rage, and writing and editing several short stories and novelettes, I decided to take a look at the first couple chapters of LH, do some edits, and then make a decision on whether I just need to do some simple editing, or maybe make a rewrite of LH my NaNoWriMo project.
Well, as of today I’ve gone through six chapters, combined three into one big chapter, and come to a decision. The first draft is somewhat sloppy, and there is a lot to work on, but that’s pretty typical of a first draft. It’s in the subsequent drafts you actually make something worth publishing. It’s certainly not bad enough at this point that I feel a total rewrite is necessary.*
It might take a lot of drafts to get it right, though. But hey, part of the joys of writing is a lot of hard work and touching up, right?
Anyway, I’ve made a start of the second draft, and I’m hopeful it won’t take too long to finish it. Maybe a couple months at most, if life doesn’t get too crazy and I don’t get too distracted. We’ll see how it goes.
In the meantime, I think I’ll take a break from editing. After all, all work and no play makes Rami a bad editor, or something like that.
Goodnight, my Followers of Fear!
*This also means I won’t be participating in NaNoWriMo this year, but I can think of worse things to happen in my life. Maybe next year I’ll participate though. In the meantime, check out my article on how to survive NaNoWriMo if you’re participating this year.
Rami Ungar The Writer 