The First Draft

Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It’s one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period.
Nicholas Sparks

I generally write a first draft that’s lean. Just get the story down.
Nora Roberts

I am an obsessive rewriter, doing one draft and then another and another, usually five. In a way, I have nothing to say, but a great deal to add.
Gore Vidal


Finally, after nine months of planning, outlining, and writing, the first draft of The Saint of Santa Fe is finished. Soon the stacks of research materials and notebooks will be gone. Today I’m taking time out for a small celebration—including a couple days of rest—before embarking on the next stage: rewriting.

People are usually stunned when I tell them that revising takes as much time as producing the first draft—sometimes more. Based on previous experience, I expect to spend another nine months rewriting the novel.

Revision may seem like an exceedingly tedious chore, but I find it the most enjoyable phase of writing a book. This wasn’t always the case, though. Early on, when I first started writing fiction, I hated revising. That was because I didn’t have a clue as to what I was supposed to be doing. Years ago, whenever I finished a draft I’d sit before a manuscript in agony, dreading the seemingly impossible task before me.

Thankfully, my attitude changed after I read an interview in which Toni Morrison expressed that, at the onset of her career, she too hated to rewrite. But once she acknowledged that it was essential to learn how to revise, she played a trick on herself, repeating, over and over, that she loved rewriting. Morrison told the interviewer that she soon started to believe the mantra, and from that time on revising became the stage of the writing process she most enjoys.

I followed Toni Morrison’s example and, amazingly, her trick worked. I now look forward to rewriting—the challenge of polishing a text has become, at least for me, an intricate and wondrous puzzle.

As I revise, I strive to make every facet of the novel—structure, characterization, setting, language, and so forth—flow seamlessly. I want the reader to have the illusion that writing the book was simple. Nevertheless, in order to produce something that reads easily I must sweat every word, every sentence, every paragraph, and every chapter until I have a whole that is smooth, coherent and, hopefully, interesting.

My recreation of the life and times of Father Héctor Gallego is now stored on the hard drive of my computer (and a couple of disks as well). But the novel is far from ready. Throughout the years I’ve grown increasingly embarrassed about showing a first draft to anyone—even my wife. But after eight, nine, or perhaps ten drafts, I’ll be ready to share the heartrending story of The Saint of Santa Fe.