On to D2

May 24, 2026

I finished the first draft of a new novel at the end of March. By the time I typed the last sentence, I already knew something was wrong. The story didn't hold. So I stopped. I had a month and a half of not working on the story. I then rewrote the outline more times than I can count, trying to pinpoint what felt wrong. What I had was a premise and characters I believed in. What I was missing was the story I really wanted to write. After I had that, I started again.

Now I'm in what I'm calling the second draft, though the label feels very arbitrary. This doesn't feel like revision, but more like a first draft of the right story. I have the characters, the structure, and the story questions. Alongside the outline I've mapped every place the material needs to change. The goal of this pass is a stable story before I go to the character work.

There's a version of me that wants to take an editing course right now. I've been looking at a few online. But every time I look up one, I come back to the same conclusion: I know what the problems are. I don't need a framework for finding them. I need to sit down and get on fixing them. It's not arrogance. It's that at a certain point, more input isn't what moves the work forward. My mind on the page is.

On to D2.