It’s always good to finish the second draft of a story.
Using the Anne Lamott version of the writing process, the first draft is just for getting everything down, and the second draft is for fixing everything up. Let’s skip her definition of the third draft (and beyond!) right now because she calls it the “dental draft” and it’s for what she calls fixing loose teeth–which is a metaphor I just don’t need at four in the morning while I’m staring at my golden prose.
What all this means is that I’ve now finished the second draft to what I’ve referred to previously as my gift story. It’s now titled “Prime Numbers,” which might stick and might not. I think it works, but we’ll see how it fares in beta read. At 9700 words I think it needs a bit of a sheering before anyone sees it, though, so I’ll get that done over the next day or so. And while I very much like the concept of the story’s end, now, I think it’s flabby…not direct enough. But I can now look at the piece as a whole and see how the thing fits together.
Yes, it’s always good to finish a second draft.