After much debate, argument, and a first draft with a bushel of “rule” inconsistencies, I have no choice but to kill my hero.

He’s not very happy about being dead. Or being undead, rather. He much preferred being the un-undead. But being technically alive, but not really, was too much of a headache for his transcriptionist (me).

Tis hard to make stuff up. Sure, I can make up my own rules, but then I have to actually follow them. And the “rule” governing his sustenance affects the rules for procreation. Fixing that doesn’t follow the rules for how they came to be, and so on and so on. Then I get to the end of the first draft and realize that the way things went down, she’s going to continue aging, and he’s not. It doesn’t take long for the Sarandon Syndrome to get out of hand there.

It probably would have been easier if he was a “I vant to suck your blood” vampire, but nooooooooooooooooooo.

Fortunately, this is my favorite phase of writing or I’d be a little discouraged. There’s a story down on paper. It’s riddled with typos, inconsistencies, bad dialogue, and exposition til the cows come home.

NOW I can work. The blank page is not my friend. That “joyful flow of free-writing” is my nemesis. The future work of going through a “finished” draft nitpicking it is also a drag—especially if it’s been through several readings.

But the editing and revising of a rough draft into a ‘workable’ draft is my favorite part of writing. Even if I have to kill my hero.