what is your writing process with the rewrite?
Honestly? An unholy mix of spite, inspiration and utter madness.
It's important to note I didn't start this rewrite because I completely hated the original draft. I mean, sure, I'm struck by imposter syndrome sometimes like any writer and the old draft is cringey as hell to me now, but as a first draft? It was fine. Certain things needed fixing, sure, but it wasn't awful. So originally, I started editing The Litte Wolf first (intending to move onto TBBW after), wanting to fix any grammar inconsistances, tighten up the lore, get rid of any plotholes, and as a whole create a more consistent, well-rounded fic with better, fully-fleshed out characters. It has been a few years since I had started the series, and my ideas had changed---it needed a refresh. And I knew by this point TBBW was going to be such a long fic, so stopping at the old chapter 35---the halfway point---to change things was sensible. I could change and edit, before moving on.
...Yeah, so, it's the understatement of the century to say things escalated quickly.
Here's why: I saw some writing advice on tumblr once and gotta say, it stuck with me. I'll link it here if you want to read the whole thing, but essentially, the writing process is this: do NOT edit. Rewrite. As in, I literally divided my laptop screen in two and set up an empty word document on the left and tbbw's old draft on the right. I started with a blank word document and re-typed. Every. Single. Word.
And you're probably thinking huh. But there are scenes in the rewrite you didn't change?
Wrong.
I re-typed them too. Every. Single. Line. I found myself changing their sentence structures, the description, dialogue---even the god damn grammar. Nothing in this rewrite has been left completely untouched. When you just re-read your work, editing as you go along, you don't change much. You let things slip by, your eyes miss things. We all do it---ever posted a chapter only to spot a spelling mistake right after?
When you're editing, it's often a tedious process and a lot of the time, you give in and you think, eh, good enough. But when I rewrite? I'm in writing mode. I'm immersed in my fic---without the intimidating blank page holding me back, because I've got my first draft right next to me. I can use it as a template and copy it out, but more often than not, I'm changing things as I go along. I'm reformating entire paragraphs, adding new scenes, cutting old ones out and oftentimes---reorganisning the entire order of said scenes. I discovered flaws in my plot and whole characters arcs that needed reimagining, and I rebuilt them in the best way. So not only did I add 125k+ of new content to what was originally there already, technically, I also wrote over 530k in little over a year?
And you're probably now thinking that's the insane part of my writing process.
Nope.
I also don't write in order. And when I say this, I don't just mean I ping-ponged between chapters, working on whichever ones struck my fancy at the time---because I did also do that---but I wrote chapters out of order. As in, I didn't always start at the beginning of the chapter. Sometimes I started rewriting in the middle. Or at the end. Sometimes, the first scene of a chapter was the last thing I wrote---it's the case of chapter 33, which is why I haven't posted in a few days. The rest of the chapter is written and good to go, but the first scene is not finished. Because I left it till last. I have generally more than once started at the end of the chapter and worked backwards, one scene at a time.
Insanity. Madness. Completely unhinged behaviour. Whatever you want to call it.
But hey---it works.