You knew it was going to happen. You expected this. Of course. Nobody gets to make a creative work just off the bat, right? Right. We know this. But still, when that second draft reality comes around, it just hits you right in the teeth, and all you want to do is run away from the pain and disfigurement.

Okay, okay, that was a tad dramatic. But still… Re-writes are not fun. There is the sense that you poured all those hours into the first draft, you sweated over how to tell the story, which scenes you wanted to employ to best tell it, how the characters would interact, what they would say, and you are therefore emotionally attached to the product. You birthed it, and there’s hence no thought ever given to throwing it away if things go wrong.

First there’s the easy part of the re-write. The bit where you read what you wrote and you make it better. That is essentially keeping what you had but embellishing, polishing, changing sentences around, and re-wording so that the message is delivered to greater effect.

The hard part is admitting bits of the story (sometimes large, all-encompassing bits) don’t work. This is where you have to make the story different by throwing out thousands upon thousands of words, roll up your sleeves, and start again.

Sometimes you don’t work this hard part out for yourself. It takes others, usually your editing buddies, to serve up the harsh truth. The reaction I have to this part of the process always makes me laugh.

First comes incredulity and denial. Oh, of course they’re wrong. They don’t understand the story the way I do. If I just explain the reasons behind the characters’ motivations, then they’ll get it. They’ll see how clever I was, and that this is really the best way to move the story forward.

Second comes the awful feeling of truth sinking in in all its brutal glory. They’re right. My story’s shit (it’s the vampires talking here). What made me think I could do this? I can’t write to save myself.

Difficult, I know, but the only way forward is forward. One step at a time. The thing is to refuse to give in, to keep aiming for the completion, and to take each problem head on when it presents itself. No matter how inconvenient the time or circumstance.

This takes courage. At no point is there any reassurance that you will succeed. It is like an early explorer setting out for a fabled land that nobody actually knows exists. It is a leap of faith, a conviction that if you keep going, working hard at what you know how to do, and committed to keep learning along the way, you will eventually get there. Even if the destination is not the place for which you initially set out. Sometimes ending up in a different place entirely to what you expected is a great gift. It is like the discovery of hidden. treasure. And then you really are the pioneer, the explorer, the inventor, and oh, my, it is a glorious thing.