The first “novel” I wrote was really a collection of first person short stories that told a longer story, called A Poor Man’s Roses. It was fun and a great learning experience, and when I “revised” it, I really just added a lot of extra scenes that I wanted and bloated the poor book beyond logic. It wasn’t something I’d show anyone now, but that’s how the process worked then.
The next “novel” I wrote, Twilight of the Gods, I wanted it to be a contemporary urban fantasy, an epic one, and so I just wrote a lot and made it really long. I had no idea about revision, so I wrote the “first draft” and was done. A few years later, I went back and revised a couple things, but not much that was major (mostly cut down on the level of violence and crude language).
Once I learned more about revision, I started writing the first draft of The Living Stone, and I made the mistake of trying to revise as I went. I like to have beta readers as I go. It really helped me with Twilight of the Gods to keep going and finish the book. But as people gave me feedback with The Living Stone, I would go back and revise or rewrite certain sections. I rewrote the first chapter 7 or 8 times. In the end, it created way more work for myself once I got done with the book and went back for more editing and revision.
So I learned. When I got into the sequel to The Living Stone, The Blades of War, I just wrote it. My beta readers gave great feedback, but I resisted going back and fixing anything. I saved their comments (much easier to do now in the digital age) and kept writing. Knowing better how to revise and edit this time, I will streamline the process.
My tip, therefore, is to just write the first draft all at once. If you have beta readers along the way as I like to do, then file away their suggestions or critiques and come back when you’re done with the whole thing. Doing the first revision, then, you can look at it from the big picture and make it better as a whole work, fitting in the details to your overall vision.
I have already broken this rule, though … I started another book, Rise of Night, over Christmas break and probably should have finished it but got sidetracked with The Blades of War. Coming back to a book like that is hard to get back in the flow, but I love the story. We’ll see how it goes …
Peace.