Wondering about the wonderful world of re-writes

As I mentioned when I started the blog, I wrote for quite a while before I started editing anything or submitting it to publishers.

So I have a lot of first drafts lying around on my hard drive waiting to be edited up. My two main writing projects for the month (The last two for the Perfect Timing Series) are re-writes of two of these old drafts.

The one I'm grappling with at the moment is called Time Out. It's a m/m BDSM novel. I wrote the first draft February 2007.

At the time I thought it was the best thing I'd ever written. I'm not sure how to discribe just how pleased I was with the story without slipping into cliches. I really thought it was chocolate.

So, when I sat down to work on it yesterday I thought I was onto a good thing. A bit of spit and polish. Add a few thousand words to bring it up to the word count I want. Tidy up a few loose ends. An easy job. By the weekend I'd move onto my next writing project way ahead of schedule.
Ha!

It turns out the story I thought was chocolate is about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. All the wondeful things I remember about the story just melted away under.

In short, the story really, really sucks.

But! There is hope.

Well, there better bloody well be hope for the story, because I still love it. I don't know how much of the original will be left by the time I've finished with it, but the core - the idea I first fell for when I started writing it - that's going to somehow survive.

Within the next two weeks the story is going to turn into what I remember it being.

Okay, now that I've given myself that little pep talk (Didn't you hear the rousing Hollywood theme music kick in half way though?) in other news...

I finished the re-write of Whispers yesterday. I've put that to one side for a day or two. I'm going to start editing it on Friday.