Tossing another draft in the trash

I won in November of 2009 Nanowrimo, in case you are not familiar with Nanowrimo, you can go to this link, but basically, they define NanoWrimo as the “National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.”
I wrote the first draft of my novel and took a break in December (for technical reasons out of my reach) and finish the reading of that first draft in January. Then I decide to toss the Draft and begin again. Took February to work again on the outline and then March and April to write the second first draft. Today, after final review, I toss it on the trash, again. Tomorrow I am starting for the third time. Some said that you need One Million Words in order to have an Expert Level Writer. That make me, just on this novel an 11% Expert.
I don’t feel bad because I am tossing this draft in the trash, actually I am proud of myself as a writer, to be able to recognize that it will take me more time to edit the current draft than begin again. I discover a couple of big holes in the story, and the two previous drafts had help me to learn a great deal about writing, dedication, and hard work.
It is always interesting when you tell the world that you are a writer, people always think it is an easy job (after they get over the fact that they don’t know you, or you are not published), every one of those people can write a novel, without too much effort, so why you are suffering with this, is impossible to understand for them.
Recently, I was traveling  in Mexico, and when I told that I was a writer someone told me: “we already had Octavio Paz and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, we don’t need anything else”. By the way, I would like to say, that this was a regular guy, and I was really honored that my work inspire this person on any way the work of Octavio Paz or Garcia Marquez, that instead of an insult was a great compliment. (regardless, this person was trying to insult me, he made it clear)
Anyway, going back to the draft, we are back to the first page…

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Augusto Pinaud

Augusto Pinaud es Coach de Tecnología de Productividad Bilingüe, Especialista en Nozbe Teams. Augusto trabaja con dueños y gerentes de pequeñas empresas, ejecutivos y profesionales en productividad, tecnología y mejora de procesos utilizando una variedad de tecnologías de productividad.

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