The Dread Pirate R . . .

Fans of The Princess Bride undoubtedly expect me to follow that “R” with “oberts.” However, as much as I love that movie (I haven’t read the book - yet), “edraft” is destined to follow the “R” in this instance.

My first serious inkling to sit down and write my story came over sixteen years after the idea first popped into my head. Or rather, drifted into my head, as it happened one night as part of a nightmare/dream sequence that I wound up getting somewhat obsessed with (clearly). Twenty years have passed since then. And I’m still writing based on the initial foundation of that sequence - a girl being chased through a forest by a man in a cloak.

Granted, what was once a story about witches and witchcraft morphed into a tale of vampires and biblical prophecy, but the core is the same. Among other things, there is a girl being chased by a man in a cloak. Through a forest. ^_^

It took only three months to write the first draft of my first manuscript. To write out a story that had been in my head for so long. To type out words that I had tried to type out for years--all the way back to the days before home computers. I still have those very first pages and they bear the welted proof of typewriter keystrokes. Later versions are lined with the holey, perforated edges of dot-matrix printer paper, their electronic forms stored on obsolete 3.5” diskettes. (I feel the need to interject here that I am a huge fan of computing’s current form. My laptop can crash on me and curse at me all it wants, but that Windows-based appendage goes with me everywhere and always will. And yes, my laptop does curse at me. Quite frequently, actually. I know. It should be the other way around.)

Anyway. Back to the Dread Pirate Redraft. As I wrote and wrote and wrote, and wrote some more, I also did research into the publishing world (not enough at the time, I might add). I saw post after post about the dreaded redraft stage. So I started to dread the redraft stage. It took on a life and symbolism all its own, much like the real Dread Pirate Roberts, even though no one really knows who the real Dread Pirate Roberts is. All that matters is that he's out there and he's dreaded. So is the redraft. A dreaded necessity of writing.

What took me three months to write took me years to redraft. And rewrite. And edit. And redraft, rewrite, and edit some more. And then some. Again. Years.

But I didn’t dread any of it. Rather, I embraced it. I found it fun. And I loved (still love) getting feedback. Each carnation of the story was better than the last. And I saved each and every one. Sometimes I cringe when I read the early drafts because the grammar and style is so awful. But then I look at my second manuscript, which, though completed, is still in its infancy, and see many of the same things. The same mistakes and grammatical errors. Long sentences that need to be broken down into at least two, if not four or five. (Yikes!) Word choices that need simplification after getting a little thesaurus-happy. And typos from over eager fingers that thought they knew what my brain wanted to say when they really didn’t. (Hello - berets are hats and barrettes are things girls wear in their hair...I’m embarrassed to admit that I missed that one maaaaany times as I read through the story over and over and over. And over. Again.)

So now, four years after starting this madness, and two manuscripts later (with a third on the way, because my brain just can’t stop), I’m still in redraft mode. Does editing ever really stop? When is enough, enough? I mean, every time I look at the first manuscript, I catch something that I didn’t catch before, or I see a sentence or a word that seems a little bit off. And as I take time away from it to work on other projects (all continuations of the same story), the distance gained allows me to revisit the first manuscript with fresh eyes to catch even more things.

Really, to me, as the author who knows every intricate detail of the story, the ability to do this is fascinating. I can never truly see it with fresh eyes and not know what’s about to happen, where a certain scene is leading, or what’s going through a character’s mind that might contradict his or her actions. Redrafting is a way to learn more about the story and the characters, and to make the world they live in better than it was before. How can I possibly dread that?