How I Write: Celebrating the Start of the Second (and Hopefully Final) Draft

Almost Done With This Sucker

The second draft of a novel is my favorite draft. The world is created, the characters are roaming around and having their hearts broken and making stupid decisions and encountering ketamine for the first time. Now I get to make things a little better, a little funnier, a little sadder.

First, I really do celebrate. Here’s me at my favorite Georgian restaurant Chito Gvrito with an adjaruli kahchapuri (yeah, I prefer the egg mixed in with the cheese for a more creamy experience) and a glass of chilled red Georgian wine. After I spend a week dining and drinking myself stupid, I am ready for the work to begin.

The primary input comes from my editor with whom I’ve worked on many novels before and then my agent. The manuscript then goes out to about five friends, many of whom are writers, but others are just excellent readers. Some of them are chosen for a specific reason, for example they may have experience with a certain culture (e.g. Korean, Tamil in my last book) or line of work (e.g. finance in Lake Success, tech in Super Sad). Sadly, two of my best readers, the excellent writers Rebecca Godfrey and Paul La Farge have passed away over the past year so I am busy assembling a new team.

Afterwards, I pull a kind of MFA workshop by synthesizing all of their comments and picking the ones that both resonate with me and also the ones that overlap. If everyone thinks Dora is underdeveloped or Mack is overdeveloped or chapter 12 is more boring than a church sermon, then I know I have some work to do.

But as I’ve said before, the second draft is a time of celebration. Frankly, it’s what happens afterwards when you have to say a final farewell to your characters and the world you’ve created that can be a real downer. Luckily, Georgian food and wine will continue to exist.