The Second Novel is Harder than the First

Ho! A rare non-photography post. Photos return Monday morning, so please come back then, or keep reading about my progress on my second novel.

Writing nonsense after the break.

I self-published my first novel, the Magic of Eyri, three years ago (has it been that long? Yikes). I started writing it in the fall of 2005, so it took me about two years to get the thing finished.

Since the fall of 2008, I have been working on my “next” novel, which I had been calling Night of the Lonely Werewolf, but now I am calling Drake (after the main character). At least for the moment.

I get asked from time to time what writing your second novel is like. It is difficult,  because I had the pleasure of ignorance the first time around.

I don’t really have that now. I “know” what I’m doing (to some extent) this go around, and I have a (slightly) better skill-set too.

Think of a garage band throwing together their first album, and relying on raw energy and determination just to get the thing done.

But now that they know what they are doing, and have some better gear, they examine every aspect of each track on their second album.

That’s what I’m in the middle of right now.

And that’s OK.

After reading through the first draft of this next novel, and making notes, I realized I needed a total rewrite.

And that’s also OK.

A brand new rewrite/story doesn’t scare me, in fact I am very much looking forward to this process.  I had some ideas for my characters that I didn’t even come up with until the final third of the novel (I almost typed “album” there, sheesh).

However this does mean a bit more world building and outlining, so I’m stuck with a bit of extra prep work.

And that is still OK.

I’m spending more time getting to know my characters and figuring out what I want them to do in this new adventure. I’m re-visiting a few writing books that helped me write Magic of Eyri, and it is aiding in this process considerably (books on mythic structure, etc).

And the more work I do, the more I know that the plot is going to be totally different. I may recycle the story from the first draft at some point, but I feel it is best to go a totally different route (but keep the same “world” and characters).

I was having problems keeping the plot together while reading through the first draft.

And that isn’t OK. At all. The plot was too complicated and murky. But remember, I’m a big proponent of “Your First Draft can be Crap.” And it was  (although I was proud of a few paragraphs).

So, I’m doing an “Apple+Z”* on Night of the Lovely Werewolf, and starting over with Drake very soon.

And that’s super-OK. To the max.

* = that’s “Undo” for you squares. Yes, I just made a Photoshop joke.