I’ve been working for several years to move things I’ve drafted and not gotten back to into higher drafts. In 2024, I’d finally gotten through most of the flash (anything not in final draft has been written since January 2025), shorts (anything not in at least third draft has been written since April 2025).
In late 2024, I started looking at half a dozen older novelettes, written anywhere between 2007 and 2019, and found them all at least salvageable, if requiring rewrites. These were all taken care of, to second and then third draft by mid-2025. There are four novelettes written in 2025 and 2026, three of them for a specific project, that have all made it to second draft, too.
However, I wasn’t quite there yet.
Languishing in my writing folder for years, there were eight novellas (three of them were technically novelettes, although one of those only barely, and one still is, at least for now) that were completed first drafts that I never got back to. As time went on, I actually became afraid to open most of them up thinking about how bad they must be. In early 2026, I decided to be brave and start seeing if any of these were salvageable. I’ve been into six out of eight of them so far, and the results have been encouraging. I thought I’d entertain myself by documenting the progress made.
Shakespeare’s Sisters is a SF story (both time travel and near-Earth space opera) that actually began as a novelette, but there were several scenes I had only written as “this event happens here” and there was a note in the middle of the story, just at the end of part 2, that came down to that part needing a major expansion because it glossed over a bunch of character development that really needed to happen. On re-read, the prose wasn’t bad and I could see what needed to be done to fix it. I also added a small scene here and there to flesh some other things out. It’s actually gone to third draft now and from 11,002 words to 23,016. I’m rather happy with the results.
Lake of Stars is a colonization of other worlds story, and the newest of the group written in 2018 (the rest that I’ve looked at so far are all from the 2013-2014 period). The basic story was good but needed some heavy rewriting for consistency and to fix a few minor points of continuity. Second drafted netted an increase in about 1500 words and it’s still technically short of novella status at 17,222 words, but the third draft (when I get there) is likely to push it over the edge.
Klaatu Barada Nikto, Baby! is a science fiction tale taking place on current-day Earth. Out of the 2013-2014 stories, this was the one I was most worried about liking. The basic concept is amusing (to me) but would it hold up? I was surprised to find a fun story. I made some notes and then some adjustments, but no major expansions or deletions, and the second draft only picked up 900 words to come in at 20.6k.
Last of the Sorcerer-Kings, Heroic Fantasy/Sword and Sorcery. I remembered this one being tough to get out of my head, which is usually a sign that the second draft is going to be a lot of work, too. As it turned out, there were only a couple of scenes that needed any real adjusting and some character work on one of the secondaries to balance things out. Going from first to second draft only added about 1400 words to be just a little under 23k.
A Gathering of Heroes, Sword and Sorcery. Gathering a band of middle-aged and old former heroes to finish something they could only stall when they were all at their physical peak. What could go wrong? In my memory, plenty. IN the writing, surprisingly little. But the primary POV character is not one of those former heroes and they needed some work to be consistent and show growth. Aside from the massive increase to Shakespeare’s Sisters, this one added the most words (1731 of them) after I blew the dust off.
Company of the Dead, Heroic Fantasy. I was sure this one had an inconsistent yet boring main character. As I read through, I found she was neither. I did have to make a few tweaks to events and build her reactions to them a little bit more here and there, but it was a surprisingly easy to do, adding not quite a thousand words to come in at 19.2k for the second draft.
And now we come to the two stories I’m still afraid to open, written in the first few months after I started taking my writing seriously. I’ve gone back to some short stories and one novelette from this period that were allowed to sit in the first draft folder for the better part of two decades and found them worthwhile for both reading and polishing. But there are others that didn’t make it out of the folder and got quietly shifted to the trunk.
Hello, My Name Is…, an SF story drafted in early 2008, has at its heart an alien name exchange ritual in which names are actually exchanged. Twenty-five thousand words of I’m worried about reading. Okay, I say “afraid to open” but I’ve done the first half of the read through and making notes. It’s not actually bad, but it’s also not actually good. I think it can be saved, but there will be some heavy rewriting here. Does that make seven for seven? I think it’s too early to tell. There’s still about fifty pages of space to go off the rails. The fear is still there.
Sleep of History, another science fiction story, technically not quite a novella at 17,377 words, but it wouldn’t take much to get it there and the nature of my first drafts seems to dictate that my second draft is, on average, 5-7% longer. A generation ship discovered more than 500 years after it was launched, its occupants still all safely frozen. I’m going to treat it seriously, but I don’t know that I’m expecting to save it.
Actually, I’m not sure I’m expecting to save Hello, My Name Is… either. I still like both concepts, at least as I remember them, but are they any good? That’s the question I need to answer. The jury is still hearing evidence on one and the other hasn’t seen daylight yet.
But I’ve gone six for six so far, each novella needing variable amounts of work on the second draft. The overall lesson is that I need to have a little more faith in my writing abilities. Which also probably means that I need to get a lot more of my work out there to make sure my opinion is good and I do have an audience.
Third drafts for all of the keepers in 2027. That’s at least six out of eight. More than that, I can’t say yet.
Be well, everyone.
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