I set about the third draft of Riptide Heart last night, and cut out massive swathes of work. When I worked on the second draft, back in January, the greatest challenge was to actually start making changes to scenes I’d spent days or even weeks creating. I found myself pussyfooting around them, tentatively reshaping phrases and changing single words, rather than digging in to make structural changes. It was weeks before I stopped being so precious about redrafting. The third draft has therefore been strangely empowering – to simply blitz through the manuscript in one go, cutting paragraphs, pages and even entire chapters.
The third draft is now riddled with holes and littered with notes and reminders, but it was cathartic to do all the destruction in one swoop. Everything from here is rebuilding.
Simon Sylvester 