The Third Draft Begins -or- Feeling Sisyphean

Today I started the third draft of The Fraternity of Greed and I'm quite well aware at this point that the Third Draft is the most important and probably most demanding with regards to personal critique as well as artistic creativity.  Too bad I'm a Math guy, but I see the logic in the process at least.  Like I said before, the third draft, using the metaphor of a car renovation is where most of the real work is done.  The first draft just ensures that the car drives, then the third draft is where anything and everything that is old is thrown away and replaced with beautiful shiny new parts.  The car is reborn at this point.

So considering it took me a solid 3 months to do the second draft (including my month off), I'm hoping I can do this in the same amount of time.  As the title suggests I'm feeling a bit like Sisyphus with his boulder right now.



So with that though I do have to give a shout out to Marette Myers (my mother in law) and Michael Miles (my good friend) who took the time to give me the fodder to really tackle the third draft well.  Mike went so far as to request a meeting at the Downing Street Pub referred to in the novel so that he could tell me his ideas on the plot.  And, let me tell you they were great ideas.  (I'm not saying I'll do all of them, Mike, but you definitely had some great stuff).

And Marette, ever the logical minded like myself, found several characters acting in ways that didn't make a great deal of sense considering their assumed backgrounds and of course she found several Deus Ex Machina moments for me to try and deal with.  For those of you that don't know, I've recently learned as well, Deus Ex Machina, or the "God out of the Machine" is a moment in the plot when something is resolved or problem is created because of an unexpected addition to the story.  Take this, as an example, if you are a fan of the show House, like I am, you know doubt remember when the show first started that it was completely reasonable to predict the final diagnosis based on the symptoms the patient presented.  Now that the show has run its course, the writers are forced to throw last minute twists 10 minutes before the end of the show that reveal the diagnosis conveniently to Dr. House and much to my egotistical frustration faster than I can figure out.

So, to prevent my readers from humbling frustrations and to provide them with a plot worth remembering I will go about my quest for the every important third draft.  I take a swig of my bourbon rocks, fire open Microsoft Word, give a high five to my buddy Sisyphus (who wishes he had a bourbon straight up I think) and get to work.

Editing A Novel Day 1 - Cluttered Minds

Today, October 1st 2010 is the first day of editing my novel Fraternity of Greed.  I've never edited a novel before and I remember the pain and anguish of editing papers 1/100th in size in school and know that this task is going to be gargantuan.  Essentially, I am going to have to take this cluttered work that spat out of my head last summer and organize it into something elegant and also potentially publishable.  As I thought about this at my desk earlier I took a look down and realized that if the editing process needed a good simile it was already right in front of me with my cluttered desk.



They say that cleanliness is next to godliness and clearly I'm more human than most, thus cleaning my desk sometimes feels like an insurmountable task.  About every month or so, I go through and put everything in its right place and while the task is Sisyphean it is none-the-less rewarding.  One step at a time, I go through each area of the desk and either throw away the unnecessary or find an appropriate spot for organization. After a just a few minutes I already feel rewarded as clean "areas" begin to appear and grow.  Before long the areas overlap into bigger swatches of cleanliness and finally in a couple of hours I'm done and wonder why I waited so long to start the process in the first place.

As I start editing FoG (Fraternity of Greed), I'm going to keep a little web log for anyone the feels like following along as someone with cursory writing talent at best attempts to turn a promising piece of work into a publishable one.  For those that don't know I'm actually a math major by training and in the world of finance so my brain is beating to a different drum that most writers I assume but I feel compelled towards writing and that's what has brought me to this point.  I finished my first draft one month ago on August 31st and at the advice of Stephen King "On Writing" I took some time away from the novel to "forget" about it and hopefully will find it easier to edit now that it will not be so fresh in my mind.

So without further ado, I am opening up my first draft, printing it, and getting started.  Hopefully the process is more fruitful and less Sisyphean than cleaning the chaos that is my desk.

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