Draft Three: The Patient Is Stable
On keeping the manuscript alive
I’m about halfway through Draft Three now, and somewhere between the late-night edits and the endless cups of herbal tea, I realised there’s a rather good medical analogy for writing a novel. It’s a bit like a hospital drama: adrenaline, surgery, and, if you’re lucky, recovery.
Bear with me.
When I was writing Draft One, I talked about building scaffolding, finding my characters, and simply getting the thing written – the messy, miraculous act of bringing something into being. Read it here –Writing the first draft .
Draft Two was the shock of discovery: reading that first draft and realising, with a mix of horror and humility, that it was far from finished. (That was the “shitty first draft” stage, and I wrote about that too.) Read it here – The second draft surprise
But halfway through this draft, I started to see it differently. The whole process could almost belong in a hospital.
Draft One begins like a medical emergency.
You’re scribbling wildly, adrenaline pumping, words arriving faster than you can catch them. There’s no time for precision or planning – you’re just trying to keep the thing alive. You convince yourself you’re writing the greatest book ever written, and for a while, that belief is its own kind of morphine.
Then Draft Two arrives, and the euphoria wears off. The patient is still breathing, but the situation is serious. Whole organs of the plot need to be moved. Arteries of motivation have clotted. There are missing limbs – scenes that should exist but don’t. You roll up your sleeves, call for the surgical tray, and begin major reconstruction. It’s messy, exhilarating, and occasionally heartbreaking, but somehow the story survives the operation.
And now, Draft Three.
The patient has made it through the night. Colour’s returning to the cheeks. The heartbeat is steady. We’re out of intensive care and into a quieter, more deliberate kind of medicine – the stage of small, steady interventions.
This is where I’ve spent the past few months:
Checking that my teenagers sound like teenagers – not middle-aged writers hiding behind hoodies.
Making sure the Victorian voice belongs to someone who’s living her century, not observing it from mine.
Testing that the historical research holds up, that the details are true enough to feel lived.
Re-threading themes and motifs so they carry cleanly through both timelines, the way a surgeon might tidy the stitching before closing the wound.
It’s slower work – closer to physiotherapy than surgery — but deeply satisfying. Every pass brings a little more coherence, a little more colour to the skin.
Next comes Draft Four: recovery.
No anaesthetic. No sharp scalpels. Just quiet days of rest and observation — reading one chapter at a time, encouraging natural breathing, helping the story regain strength. This is the phase of polishing, rhythm, and breath – making sure every heartbeat of the book feels steady in the reader’s hands.
I’m not thinking much about Draft Five yet.
That will be convalescence: the manuscript walking unaided, greeting its first beta readers, perhaps even taking a few careful steps out into the world.
Because in the end, writing really is rewriting — a long process of stabilising, strengthening, and learning to stand again.
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I’m also a Somatic life coach- more about that HERE
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