I Am Doctor Frankenstein

by Lisa Sledge

At least, that’s how it feels these days.

I’m on my second draft. It’s a complete rewrite of the first.

It’s as if I took my baby and chopped it up into tiny bits. I’ve deleted characters, scenes, and subplots that didn’t go anywhere. Now I’m stitching in new material to fill in the gaps, changing the narrative voice (kind of a big deal), and deciding what remains to be salvaged from the old. It’s not much.

My book is a mess, but at least it’s an improvement over the first. So that’s encouraging.

With any luck, however long it takes to get to a final version, I hope I’ll be successful hiding the stitches and seams of my revisions. I hope I can blend the bits and pieces of my manuscript together in a way that appears natural.

I’m grateful for fresh readers who look at my writing and give me honest opinions. After staring at it so long, I can’t tell what’s working and what I only think is working. I cling to reassuring voices for dear life.

And I ask myself, am I having fun right now?

No. Not especially. What I’m doing is honest to goodness hard work.

But even if every moment isn’t a party, I love ending a writing session and knowing that my story is better because of what I did that day.

Patience. Determination. Perseverance.  It’s bound to add up to something.