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302 Part V: Polishing Your Product: Revising and Editing
Reacquainting Yourself with
Your First Draft
After finishing your first draft, you’re so intimately involved with the story
that you’re unlikely to gain anything by starting to reread or rewrite straight
away. Instead, take some time out to refresh your energy, and then print out a
copy and read it all again and again, to yourself and out loud.
Leaving your first draft alone for a while
When you’ve completed a first draft, the single most useful thing you can do
is to put it aside for as long as you can: a weekend, a week, a month or more –
the longer the better.
If possible, finish the first draft just before you go on holiday, and don’t take
any of your writing with you: give yourself a complete break and try to forget
your work.
When you put aside your work for some time before you read it again, the
more distance you have and the more you’re able to judge it objectively, as
your future readers will.
If you don’t have time to put your work away, go and do something completely
different before coming back to it. Here are a few ideas for clearing
your mind:
✓ Go for a walk.
✓ Cook a meal.
✓ Do some gardening, decorating or house cleaning.
✓ Sleep on it.
These activities help your conscious mind to go ‘idle’. You may find that your
subconscious mind works on your story while you’re physically occupied
with something else.
When you do something else that uses your mind actively, you don’t have the
spare capacity to ‘think’ subconsciously about your book.