Traveling and Wrestling with The Hardest Draft
First of all, a quick confession: I have moved from seven to eight drafts. Yep, to make it as good as I can humanly make it (that means, yes, there are still mistakes, just like there were still mistakes in my NY-published books!), I must go over a story eight times, dissecting it like a frog in Biology class. * * * So last week, I spent time flying and visiting. Specifically, Utah and Las Vegas. Chicago on Plane #1 Nevada/Utah Border on Shuttle #1 The Garden Center in Utah: at least someone's having a spring! Trying on hats while dad looked for bubbler parts But whenever I go to Utah (or Florida or Maine or Massachusetts or Washington DC), I bring work. This time, the work was me FINALLY getting through Draft #4 (the longest, hardest draft in the writing process). Beating Draft 4 into Submission Draft 4 is an interesting draft. Why? 1) I interview the story with my six-page, single-spaced list of questions I've compiled from 10-20 wri...