2nd Draft done

I was, admittedly, joking when I started the second draft and thought I'd have 300 pages or so by the end. Considering the 1st draft was 211, I didn't think I'd add in 89. Turned out to be 90 when all was said and done. I must say though, I like the story now than I did before I began and before I finished the first draft. The concept evolved so drastically that I don't recognize it as anything other than what it has become (even though I know it was originally far more of a lark). While it is egocentric to think it, I do feel like the various things I've learned over the years is finally starting to culminate. Cherry Blossoms just feels deeper than the others.

I think it's for that reason I'm certain this will be the book that I like more than other people do. You never know, it might be considered the best overall, but I can very well imagine the scenario wherein the book I think is the best to date is actually accepted as luke warm to mild disinterest. I do accept this, however. It does, in many ways, simply stand apart from the other stories so even if it stands as a poorly received book, I still love it.

Now onto the full bios and the third draft.

David Barentine
www.wotps.com

By my math, I've added 1/4th of a book....

It seems odd to get a slight bout of writer's block on the second draft, though this would qualify more as a writer's break as I do want to consider whether or not I'm going to write some actual battle (as I initially thought to do) or the ending of that battle (which would be much shorter). I'll likely do the latter but for the moment my heart isn't in doing any more.

At current, I have added a total of 70 pages in this second draft, which means 1/4th of the current number is all new. It's hard to feel like I'm rewriting in the sense of correcting as much as writing a whole extra book. That said, it is making the original draft better (in my opinion) and filling in a lot of the gaps that simply were not in the first draft. I am now (mathematically) 73% finished with this draft, which I feel is quite good considering the amount I'm writing as much as correcting. Once done, I will give it to a second set of eyes for opinions and mark-ups and the like while I work on character bios and more sketches. And now that I have painter 12, I hope to make the sketching a lot faster.

David Barentine
www.wotps.com

175 of 275

While the goal continues to move further back, and the progress is taking me back to a page number that was the original end to the first draft, I am now 2/3rds of the way through the second draft, and with an added 64 pages worth of new material (which in turn had to be edited and played with, etc) I can say that I have better hopes now for Cherry Blossoms than I did at the beginning. I would like to say I go into writing stories with a full understanding of what I will have by the end, but that's a lie every time. I do remember a director once saying "Once I've finished a movie, I know how to make THAT movie. But I don't know how to make any movie. Only the movie I just made."

This particular book has taken on fully, the dress and garb of what I was only half-heartedly believing that I could write. I wanted some story that helped tell the fleeting nature of life against a background of cherry blossoms and vampires and now it actually feels like it met that goal a bit.

Most of the 64 pages are not conflict but foreshadowing and character. I have had three scenes in particular which were very interpersonal and very character compelling and I have to say, I love them when they work, and they take as much difficulty to do as the writing of action scenes. Now I wonder how well those aspects will hold up against the character backdrops. I will see when I take on the 3rd draft.

David Barentine
www.wotps.com

still not half-way....

48 pages now have been added in the second draft. I am currently at 126 of 259 and I know that I'll be making even more additions in the coming chapters. It's really hard to get a feel for how long this will take considering that I've added a third of what I've reviewed thus far. By such a notion, I should only end up with 70 pages added, but that percentage is going to spike something fierce by the time I get into part 3 of the book. I'm looking forward to the third draft because I'm certain I won't be adding nearly as much that time.

David Barentine
www.wotps.com

Almost to half-way

I'm now mathematically at 43% rewritten. For the past four days it's hovered around 37-42% thanks to all the pages added during that time. This rewrite doesn't feel like rewrites in the past, mostly because of what is being added to it and how much rewriting I did in the initial draft. Normally I just write what I think and shift things around in the rewrite, but this first draft I was editing and re-editing pieces as it was being written, shifting pages and paragraphs all around.

At the moment, I have added 36 pages, though I'm averaging 4 pages at the beginning of every chapter, and I feel it will only grow more as the story progresses. Since the story is still at the investigation portion, there hasn't been as much done yet to add in the details of the religion but that will be a mouthful to add certainly.

Anyway, it's going good, thankfully, and I don't think the pace has been impeded yet by the additions. At least with the page total I'm starting to feel like the book is fuller than it was. the short length made me feel I was missing huge gaps.

David Barentine
www.wotps.com

Seemingly Self-Inflicted Futility

The second draft of Cherry Blossoms is slow-going as expected, though not entirely for the same reasons as possibly it could. I like to create a full biography for every character, creature, location and odd reference in every book and do so in the first re-write, counter-intuitive as it seems. It's mostly because I've found that if I create a story, create a few basic characters and then let the characters discover themselves as they tell how they are going to go about the story, I find far more interesting and personal characters in the end. My characters sometimes come out fully formed, and other times there is a flatness to them initially that they grow out of as the story progresses. It allows me to go into the second draft and add in the personalities I discovered in the first draft and change my bios accordingly. So while I'm only on page 54 of the rewrite, I've actually accrued far more pages of writing that just isn't in the book (for use in future rewrites).

There is a feeling of futility, particularly with this rewrite, that I'm smiling at. When I finished the first draft, the book was 211 pages. Here I am, 54 pages in and I have 226 pages total. I've already added 15 pages to the actual book, and I know I have at least 54 pages of bios written. This is 15 pages more after several changes and augmentations, and I haven't even gotten to the greater additions I plan to do. So while I look at my pages and see how far I'm going, the distance to the end keeps increasing. There's a certain pleasure to that in an odd sort of way. It makes the tedium of bio-writing tolerable.

David Barentine
www.wotps.com

Second Draft underway

It might seem a bit odd that I waited until the second draft to truly do a detailed dive into the religion and culture of the world of Cherry Blossoms, but to be frank, I went in with a good idea of what I wanted and cared more about making sure the characters and story held up and made sense. Now that I have the confidence that the story works, I am cramming in the world and making whatever additions and changes are necessary. To that end, Chapter 0 is done.

I've been looking at the various things I want to make sure I include (mostly notes decided while writing the first draft that I wanted to include earlier) and marrying with it other ideas created after the draft was finished. Among them is a redesign of an entire city and geography and the addition of a complete culture. Basically I'm adding my version of the Japanese myth of the Tengu and have been designing concepts for them this week.

But married to that has been researching and detailing the religious overtones. I didn't really want to put anything seriously religious in, initially, because that's always treading dangerously close to turning off some potential readers. Though I've written other books with a religious-themed group, as I was writing the first draft it became apparent that there was a need for a certain... heavy hand with religious figures included, just by the nature of what I was writing about. I try not to be heavy-handed but I do want a religious ideology that becomes the definition for the culture I'm writing so there was a strong attempt to sort out how I would weave it in unobtrusively. While I think I can manage it (at least to the point that it isn't really thought about much until the final battle), it was interesting to write the dissertation today to create the official mythology and worship practices.

Now I get to see how some of my additions to the draft will play out. I'm hoping that the additions will be flowery enough to impress but not deviate the story too much that you get lost in those details. And I hope people accept my chapter haiku (which I like the idea of doing, but I don't like haiku).

David Barentine
www.wotps.com