Writing Book 13: Draft Two

 

I finished the first draft of Book 13 mid-December and I then put it to one side so I could have a writing break over Christmas. I loved getting to know the main character, Zoey and her friends, so I was more than ready to jump back into the book in January. The kids were supposed to be back at school/college by then, but obviously all that changed and we're back in lockdown with home-learning.

Home-learning feels very different for me this time; Isobel's now in high school and her classes are all online, whereas last time, when she was in primary school, she had 2-3 'live' lessons per week and the rest of her work was a list of tasks that I had to organise into a timetable and help with as well as filling in any gaps with worksheets/tasks I found online. It felt a lot more hands-on first time around than it does now, and it was definitely a lot more stressful.

That doesn't mean it's a breeze now - there are still four of us working/learning from a small house (with three of us doing so in the living room) so we're all having to adapt to extra noise, pausing our work when help is needed etc. It's definitely more difficult to concentrate, but a couple of weeks in and we seem to be getting on with everything okay. Luckily, I'm happy with the structure of Book 13, which lessens the task of editing. 

Because I'm happy with the structure, this draft is more of a tidy up and polish rather than having to shift scenes about and rewrite, and I'm about two-thirds through the manuscript. The next stage will be to use Word's read aloud function to make sure I'm happy with the flow of the story and to find any little niggles I've missed during this draft.