What was I thinking?

Recalling their early school days, most people look at writing as something they try to avoid. Admittedly, staring at a blank paper or computer screen is often formidable.

I started Crooked Foot with the idea that it might make a good short story and was surprised when the opening premise turned out to be four chapters. By that time, it has taken on a life of its own and the characters dictated their stories....Well, maybe that’s not exactly the way it went but, yes, the story did seem to have its own life.

As I remember, the first draft came in pieces but the pieces did not arrive in sequence. So, most of the effort in the second draft was organization. The third draft involved checking continuity and writing those little segments needed to bridge the gap between different pieces. The fourth draft finally got down to the nuts and bolts of grammar and word usage.

Hindsight, early drafts seemed to come pretty quickly. During the re-writes, it often took more time to change a few lines than it took to write a whole chapter.

Taking time to do a little triple-A (An “After Action Analysis” asks three questions: [1] What happened; [2] Why did it happen; and [3] What was learned?).

To summarize the results of the analysis, I figured out that I needed to use a more structured approach (think outline, storyboard, etc.) in order to cut down the development time. This fact is probably obvious to everyone reading this.

Does it work? While waiting on literary agents’ responses to my query, I’ve started on my next book, Explorer, and banged out forty pages. Are they perfect? No, not by any means but I think they will require a lot less rework. We’ll see.