Eyes of Stone, You, and Draft Zero Point Five

This is another process post; if you find those boring you are welcome to move on.

For those who don't know, I'm back at work on my second novel, Eyes of Stone, which I consider proof of both hubris and a strong streak of masochism. It's a rewrite of a novel I wrote when I was much younger (read: five years or so ago), which I realized had great potential but some elements that were, to put it bluntly, complete dreck.

To say the process is being beastly is an understatement; it has been a long time since I found myself working under this strong a mixture of confidence and doubt. I keep thinking I need to start over, and I keep telling myself I shouldn't; and rather than spiral downward I'll just be throwing this out here, because everyone knows that posting it on the Internet will make it real.

I am christening my current work on Eyes of Stone Draft 0.5. It's enough of change from the original to constitute a whole new draft, but it is not making the full jump from Draft Zero to Draft One that I had hoped for (and that, I am accepting now, it was ridiculous to hope for).

So the project now, to put it simply, is to allow the story to write itself out; to tell the story with all the characters, all the twists, all the turns and toils and triumphs; and to allow it to sit the way I let Draft Negative One sit for a while, before I bust out the bone-saw and the cautering iron.

I can do this. I mean it. I can really, truly do this. But as I will often say: this is why so many authors drink.