Well, I’m finally doing it. I’m finally editing what will become my first full length novel. That is not to say I am done with novellas. I am rather fond of how direct I can be with my storytelling in shorter works, but it is exciting to see something a little larger on the horizon.

That being said, I am not sure if I picked the right manuscript to start with. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I hoped to edit four of my manuscripts this year, most of which I wrote the rough drafts for last year.

While I was expecting my 130k word satire to be the one to cause the most headaches, the Absolute has turned out to be no walk in the park. Though just 56k words, most of them are being deleted or completely re-written.

The direction I am taking the novel is much different than the rough draft’s original story. When I wrote the initial draft it was the story of a man seeking a path to god to unleash his wrath. He wanted to kill god and at times read like a fever dream.

The re-writes are turning it more into a crisis of faith. A painter at a crossroads, returning home when he is commissioned to paint a mural next to the new chapel. The painter does not have the best memories of the town, though for the most part it’s not the town’s fault, and when his fiance died (four years before the book takes place) he is more than happy to do his best to try and float through life.

While the initial draft was a more physical fight with supernatural entities, the newer one is more about the conflict of legacy and how one wants to be remembered. If it is too late to change how we are perceived and is it too late to find happiness?

Though it’s tiring, I am happy with the optimism I will be able to include in this new draft and the connections with characters my protagonist will be able to make, whereas in the initial draft it was all about finding a path and characters were seen more as tools to get from point A to point B.