The Second Draft: Where the Book Actually Happens
The first draft is a promise. The second draft is the book keeping it.
New writers ask me about the first draft. They should be asking about the second.
A first draft is a promise you make to yourself in private. It can be bad. It should be bad. Its only job is to exist. Nothing is at stake yet — you are simply proving the story can be told.
The second draft is where the book actually happens. It is the draft in which you find out what you were really writing about. The first draft thought it was about a summer on the coast. The second draft realises it was about a father.
I write second drafts slowly, in the mornings, with the first draft printed out and covered in blue ink. I do not rewrite from the top. I rewrite from the truest sentence I can find and let the rest reorganise around it.
If you are stuck on a first draft, finish it badly and move on. The real book is waiting one draft further in.
