So I’ve finally been able to turn back to consideration of ‘Shipbreaker’ (the story that kicked my ass during the First Annual Great Christmas Write-a-thon) after completing the first draft of ‘The Festival of Toxcatl‘ last week–that one’s now off to a few trusted readers for their thoughts before I polish it up for submission.

And speaking of polishing, it’s always fun for me to go back over a first draft (especially one that gave me the kind of trouble ‘Shipbreaker’ did), rip it apart, and put it back together better than it was before. Better…stronger…faster. The comments of my readers were especially helpful in seeing where I’d gone astray, bored the reader, written like crap, etc.

Yes, loyal blog reader, it’s sad but true: not every word that spews from my fingers is golden genius the first time around. Sometimes it requires a bit of alchemy first…

I heard Rob Sawyer say once that the first draft is hard work and the rewrites are the fun part. Farley Mowat once said that he hated writing, but loved having written. I think I can see what they both meant and I agree.

I also like Julie Czerneda‘s poem:

Ah, revision!
How sweet the pain
that bringeth out
what I meant to say in the first place…

‘Shipbreaker’ is intended as a submission to the pirate anthology Fast Ships, Black Sails. So that means I’d better hurry–submissions are due by 28 February, which is fast approaching…

– S.