Your Draft Novel is an Ugly, Misshapen Lump of Clay
You need to pummel it into a book that somebody might read!
A first draft is messy, loaded with incomplete thoughts and plot points that lead to dead ends or never even get started.
Think of yourself as a sculptor. Return to your first draft — not with some fine artistry tools — but with a blowtorch, sledgehammer, and pickaxe. As in, “I’m going in!” The artsy, refining-type stuff must take a back seat.
You may need to do some dismembering, even a full beheading of your draft novel. Later, you may have to accept the depressing reality that you need to start the damn thing over. No one escapes this miserable stage, and if any writer tells you their massively successful book sprung fully formed from their mind onto the page, they LIE!
My first two novels were published in three countries around the turn of the century. Twentieth, but thank you for asking.
They did not do well (tepid reviews, few sales), and one of these days, I will write about why I think they ended their lives on remainder tables, in case anyone remembers those sad little tables at the back of bookshops and bookshops themselves.
