A couple of weeks ago, a few days before family arrived from out of town, I typed “The End” to a book manuscript I’ve been working on for 16 months. That’s a little long for me. Usually I finish a manuscript in just under a year. But I also started a business in 2012 so admittedly I was busier than normal.

A few days later I printed out the rough draft and stacked it on my working table (mostly because my desk was, and still is, covered with things that need to be scanned/filed/shredded, which is why I have a “working table” in the first place but that’s another post) and that is where the draft remains, not because I dread the first edit, but because I don’t.

I enjoy the first edit more than writing the original draft. Why? Because once the first draft is done, I have something tangible to work with. It’s no longer an idea, a dream, a possibility. It’s there. It exists. I don’t see a rough draft as a completed project. I see it as a foundation, a structure, a base for what I’m about to build.

Contrary to the stereotypical writer, I don’t become terribly attached to anything in my first draft. I don’t have to wrestle with the necessity to “kill my darlings.” The words that make up my first draft are just words. They can be rearranged, exchanged, hauled off to another section, or discarded altogether. That’s all fine with me as long as when I am finished I have created what I imagined before I typed “chapter one.”

Words are only one of the ingredients of that creation, just as sand is only one of the ingredients of a beach. By itself, it’s just sand. But sculpted by water and wind, creatures on top of and beneath it, and the hands and tools of people, the sand becomes anything from castles, to turtle nests, to dunes. As a writer I am the sea and the air, the life above and below the surface, combining and recombining words to create the landscape of my story.

It’s during the first edit that I do begin to resemble some of that writer stereotype. I become a bit obsessed. I become so focused on the book, the book, the book, that I put off everything else, things like chores and social opportunities, or any other use of my free time, sometimes even those daily walks on the beach. Clearly my priorities get out of whack.

Knowing my tendency to develop tunnel vision during the first revision, I’ve left my manuscript undisturbed so that I could cross some important items (like hosting a family visit, completing first quarter business administrative duties, and uploading a few website changes) off my task list. With that done, I can safely devote my attention to that stack of paper on my working table. But first, just in case I get lost in my work, I think I’ll take a walk.

Dolphin Plaza entrance to Hanna Beach, Kathryn Abbey Hanna Park, Jacksonville, FL