The second draft is where the fun is. In a first draft, you get to explode. The objective (at least for me) is to get it down on paper, somehow. Battle through the laziness and the not-enough-time and the this-is-rubbish and everything else, and just get it written. Whatever it takes. The second draft is where you go and gather together the fragments of the explosion and figure out what it is you did, and make it look like that was what you always meant to do.
Ah, yes. Make it look like you knew what you were doing all along. That's the art of writing fiction.
I have heard from a number of people who dream of being published in inspirational romance and have studied my books for clues on what makes a salable novel in that genre. Their e-mails have complimented me on things like my deft use of "symbolism" in Chapter Three and the subtle "foreshadowing" in Chapter Six. I can't tell you how often (well, I could, but it would make me look needy and pathetic) I find myself reaching for my dog-eared copy of the book in question to see if I really am as clever as these correspondents think.
Very often, I am not. Because those reader/writers are bringing their own experience and values to my stories, they're making assumptions about what I intended. But that's okay. It just means their imaginations are working hard. And if they can learn something or get inspired by reading my book five times and counting the pages in each of my chapters or studying whatever symbolism and foreshadowing they believe they have found (I don't know; maybe I did accidentally slip some in), then I am delighted.
