Pressing on: Third time lucky!

My facebook status says this: writing is writhing rewriting.

That's because i decided, yesterday, to re-write my 2nd draft. I wrote my first draft more than 3 mths ago. Word count, about 25k words. 2nd draft, so far, word count, 10k words. Now, restart. A 3rd draft. I'm back to 2k words.

Why?

I must be crazy. Even I think I'm crazy. Okay.

NAC people would be worried? Why? They might ask. Did you not plan properly?

I tried. so hard. I'd sob, remorsefully. Boohoo.

Just read Late Bloomers by Malcolm Gladwell in What the Dog Saw. He quoted Franklin Roger's description on Mark Twain's "trial-and-error method":

"His routine procedure seems to have been to start a novel with some structural plan which ordinarily soon proved defective, whereupon he would cast about for a new plot which would overcome the difficulty, rewrite what he had already written, and then push on until some new defect forced him to repeat the process once again."
Twain fiddled and despaired and revised and gave up on Huckleberry Finn so many times that the book took him nearly a decade to complete.

This is normal, this really is. Some people can write a story and have a day job and be wonderful at both. Some people are born with good grammar. Some people know what they're doing with their lives.
Okay.
Some people are like Mark Twain.

I only hope I won't take a decade.

In case I lose my mind, I would like to say Thanks to my family and Gary, who are my resident patrons, all my friends encouraging my writing, NAC, and even my organisation that for letting me go on No Pay Leave, for allowing me to exist in this bubble of clueless faith, for allowing the completion of one and half useless manuscripts for one and a half lousy novellas that will never ever get to meet the eyes of another person if I can help it.

I assure myself that the quality of writing is not measured by word count. It pains me more than anyone to waste 40k words worth of effort. But that heartbreak would be nothing compared to that if my next 30k words are... Touch wood!

I must press on. key by key. letter by letter. tick tock. Third time HENG! SOON! LUCKY! okay!