Snapping Back from Second Draft Blues

The sun’s streaming through the east window of my studio this morning, melting away winter’s chill and warming my writing area as I settle in to keep working on the second draft of The Catalina.

Last week, I dug myself into such a deep hole of reviewing, rethinking, and rewriting that I spiraled straight into what I’m calling the Second Draft Blues. It wasn’t pretty. I took everything far too seriously and forgot the part where writing is meant to be fun.

Thankfully, a few writing buddies from past creative writing courses gently slapped me back into a better frame of mind. Their reminder to lighten up was exactly what I needed.

So today, reinvigorated, I’m returning to my structural overview to see where it leads me.

As I type this, I’m smiling because it’s becoming obvious that whether anyone reads these posts or not, the act of journaling is helping me understand myself as a writer—the emotions that flare up at different stages, the highs and lows of the creative process, and the strange clarity that comes from reflecting on it all.

Back to structural overviews. For me, it’s the road map of the story—though I couldn’t write mine until I was about three‑quarters through the first draft, when the ending finally revealed itself. When I started The Catalina, I had no idea what the story would become. All I had was the true event: my Grandpa buying a decommissioned Catalina seaplane during the 1956 Murray River flood so he could keep cutting and hauling railway sleepers from the flooded Gunbower Forest near Koondrook.

In writing terms, that makes me a pantser—someone who writes forward without a map and discovers the story along the way. One thing I learned in my first creative writing course was that most novels, even the wild, unplanned ones, eventually fall into a three‑act shape. What I discovered and have been working on in this review of my first draft is, although my story definitely falls into the three-act framework , there’s still work to be done.

Which brings me back to last week: a mess of confusion, frustration, and overthinking. But today is the start of a new week, and I’m stepping back into the Cut, Shape, Polish course from the Australian Writers’ Centre to figure out where I lost my way—and how to get back on track.

By next week, no matter where I’m up to, I’ll have revisited my structural overview, probably reshaped it, and I think I’ll be ready to share what I’ve learned—and maybe a little more of the story itself.

Until then, my very best to you.