When That Second Draft Is a Second Chance

"Writing is re-writing." That's what every composition teacher I’ve ever had told me at least once or twice.

That point is particularly inescapable, almost like death and taxes. There's hardly a writer out there who produces a perfect first draft. As hard as picking up the pen may be, scooping it up and writing your project all over again can be even more challenging.

"Writing is re-writing“ is surfacing in my memory as I prepare to start a second draft of my play (working title: "Two Drink Minimum"). The phrase is especially ringing in my ear as a first-time playwright.

I've been sitting on the first draft since December of last year. Over the last two months I've been receiving feedback from some trusted readers. Any writer who takes this seriously shows drafts of their work to colleagues or editors for guidance, and I am incredibly lucky to have a handful of talented theater and film writers to turn to. When I have feedback from one last reader, it's time to bust open a new Word doc and take another whack at it.

But a second draft is a whole new animal for me... I've literally never gotten this far.

Confession time. I've never written a first draft for any writing idea I've ever had. Aside from school assignments I had to complete so I didn't fail or repeat a grade, I've never finished an idea.

Trust me, I've had plenty of ideas. There was a time in my life (around middle school) where I wanted to pursue a career as a science fiction writer. My childhood room was littered with notebooks containing opening pages of tales in far away worlds. My computer hard drive had countless Word docs of Star Trek fan fiction and half-baked epic fantasy novels.

I'm not too sad that I didn't happen to grow up and write the next Dune or Ready Player One. For one thing, I liked being seen more than being read as a kid, which is what attracted me to theater. Also, I didn't have the patience to sit and write page after page in my early teens or even my 20’s to be honest.

Which brings me to the point of why I feel intimidated at the prospect of embarking on a new draft. Writing the first draft didn't test my adult-level patience a lot because it was a new idea, a new story I was writing and discovering as I went along. Writing a second draft is not going to be as exciting.

It's just not going to feel the same.

New York is a city of second drafts

"Everyone coming to New York is either running from something or running to something."

Here's a big component of being a New Yorker from birth. You'll never quite understand the tendency of people to move here and reinvent themselves.

From Broadway hopefuls to visual artists, from craftsmen to coders; there's something about New York City that inspires people coming to town for an opportunity to become a whole new person.

Being a native here means you are who you are for the most part. Assuming you don't have a family in the Bronx and a family in Staten Island that don't know about each other, and honestly if you can pull that off in the social media age more power to you. But

However, once you’ve hit the 10 year or so mark in New York you get used to seeing a new crop of young entrepreneurs and artists pour out the port authority every few months to chase their dreams in the Big Apple.

I knew the convention had peaked when Taylor Swift wrote a song about it. The song was rightly handled at the time, but Swift had found her audience by 2014, and no accusations of glorifying gentrification were going to derail the success of the song. I'll admit, it’s on the most tolerable Taylor Swift album for me.

Nevertheless, I am tickled inside at the idea that I'm trying to revise or re-do something deeply personal to me, in a town where a solid chunk of its denizens have already done similar on a more personal level!

Finally, a New York thing the transplants got to before me.

And surely, if millions of New York City transplants can reinvent themselves, so can I.

I'm not exactly going to reinvent the play I wrote, it’s still going to be a contained story with a small cast. But it's going to be longer for sure, luckily I already have a solid idea of which characters I need to develop more, and where in the play I need to put that development.

Mostly I'm wondering what it will feel like to read what I wrote almost three months ago. I don't have any other projects at the moment, no irons in the fire. While following the advice most of my writing friends gave me (throw it in a drawer and forget about it for a few months), I didn't have any other writing to work on while I did that. Maybe I should have started this blog earlier?

So there's been plenty of time to meticulously go over feedback I've received from friends, think, re-think, and overthink various scenes. I've stared at the file on my computer, hovering over it with my mouse, fighting the urge to open it up and read it before my self imposed three-month time-out from looking at it was up.

But don't worry, friends, self-control prevailed and I haven't opened up the play. So I'll get to read it for the first time in a few weeks. Then get a blank page up, and start a whole new version.

Maybe the reason why so many writers told me to put the play away and focus on other things after the first draft was to preserve the novel feeling I had when writing the draft in the first place.

I may be worried about being bored while writing the 2nd draft cause it’s not like writing the first for the first time, but what if I’m distracted with re-discovering the piece I wrote? Certainly this experience making a second draft will be novel enough to get me through it?

Perhaps the second draft... Is a second chance to form your take while you're re-familiarizing yourself with your first take.

So that's the energy I'll bring to my second draft.

And who knows? Maybe the play, and myself, will come out a whole new person.