Doing the Rewrite Dance

I'll be getting feedback from my beta reader any minute now, which means I'm getting ready to work on Bound rewrites. I may have mentioned before that I love rewrites. Most of you out there who have written anything might call me a sadist. Most people hate rewrites. It's work, it's not fun, it's so much easier to just vomit on the page (aka writing the first draft).

That's all true, I'll admit it.

It is work. There are times when I look at my work and say, "What was I thinking?" But still I love it. Even as I was writing the first draft of Bound, I had changes and additions I wanted to incorporate. Changes like:

• Boring scene! Ack! Boring scene. Help it, please!
• Add a little more romance between Wyn and Tom. Yup, the cute boy is named Tom. And no, I'm not giving away more details than that. But this story is definitely more romantic than my previous two novels have been. It just really fit the mood. And Wyn just really needed a nice guy in her life.
• Add more details of x (you remember jr. high algebra when you always solved for x?) so that a + x = b. Don't worry, there's no math involved, but it's that whole I'm-not-giving-away-details thing. But the point of the equation was to show that looking at the entire story allowed me to see what was missing so I could fill in more details early on. You know, the whole foreshadowing thing.

While I was writing the first draft, I didn't let those ideas slow me down. I just made a note of it and then plunged ahead until everything was on the page. Then when I was done with the first draft, I took a deep breath, enjoyed my sense of accomplishment for two minutes, and then proceeded to dive into my rewrites.

I guess I like rewrites so much because it's like a puzzle. I get that from my grandma. She can sit and work on jigsaw puzzles for hours. Doing that makes my eyes go buggy, but it's the same idea. Take the little pieces, decide how they fit and then make a big, beautiful picture.