As I completed my latest brain child, the first book in my new Regency series, Terror of the Ton, I was struck by how much fun I had writing the first draft. The book is a romance, of course, and a comedy, so the laughter + the Happily Ever After factor make for a fun ride, even as IÂ was writing.
The trick to working on the second and third drafts is that I am often still in love with the book. Now being in love with your own book is a good thing. It’s a natural part of the book-writing process. But before too long, I find that I have to detach and try to look at my novel as my editor is going to: namely, look for the holes, the inconsistencies, the places where the plot drags. I also try to look for small mistakes, the places in the manuscript where the same character has different colored eyes in different scenes, and for times when my heroine wears two different colored dresses in the same scene.
So when I work on 2nd and third drafts, I try to look for typos and small errors, but more importantly, I try to look at the novel as a whole, at the arc of the plot and where it needs tightening. Of course, no matter how careful I am, I still miss a lot. Which is why I have the fabulous Mary Altman looking over my shoulder, to keep me out of the proverbial traffic, helping me to each novel the best that it can be.