The Third Cut is the Deepest

When I surprised myself by how quickly I was writing Dark Water, I honestly thought that it could possibly be published by the end of this year. Assuming someone would want to publish my novel in the first place.

I started writing this crime fiction mid to late March and finished the first draft by the beginning of August. For me, it shattered a record for writing a book, especially since I had taken more than two weeks off to travel to Peru and several more weeks to work on photos from that vacation, and to put together kayaking videos for my YouTube channel, too.

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When I finished the first draft, I took a few days to empty my head of the story. Though I was done, I knew that I wasn't done-done: there would be errors to fix, facts to check, and storylines to verify—to make sure that I didn't contradict things that I wrote in one place and mess up later in the story.

When I read through the novel, I did find some mistakes that I needed to clean up. There were also some things relating to police work and the legal system that I glossed over on the first draft but needed to tighten up, fix, or elaborate on.

Upon finishing the second draft, I shared the Google Docs files with DW and friends who were interested in reviewing Dark Water. I left the manuscript with them at the end of August, before DW and I headed out on our vacation in the Laurentians and the Saguenay Fjord.

During that time, I tried to not think of the book but it was tough. Plus, I had already started work on The Watcher, the next Calloway and Hayes murder mystery. I've had these characters in my head for some time now and couldn't wait for feedback.

The only critical feedback I had hear by the end of September was from DW. And though she hadn't finished reading the story, she gave me something at the start that got me thinking of more changes.

Last week, I started work on the third draft.

Image: Perplexity

I'm being brutal on the story, this time. It's very hard for a writer to look at sections of his or her creation and think, nope, that's not necessary to the story, and start ripping them out.

DW saw a crack in the story very early on and I've totally changed that section, adding new content and creating two new—though minor—characters. It's funny how one idea that seems so small at first becomes even bigger when you start working through it and how the detectives would deal with the new information.

I thought I'd be cutting out sections and here I was, adding more pages.

There are pages that I've also removed entirely. Early into sharing with you the opening chapter of Dark Water, I wrote about a retired couple that discover the murder victim in the Rideau River while kayaking. On my third draft, I've cut so much from that chapter that when I was done cutting, the book was five pages shorter.

There was too much backstory to minor characters and it didn't move the story forward.

I'm taking more time to go through this draft than I did with the second one. I want this to be the final draft before I submit it to a publisher. And while I'm sure that the publisher will edit more, I want to give that person as lean a story to start with.

Deleting words from a novel is hard. I had to say goodbye to parts that I enjoyed writing. But in the end, writing too much is just too much. Things had to go.

Wish me luck while I finish work on this third draft. Hopefully, it'll leave me with a work of which I can be truly proud.

Happy Friday!