As I've mentioned here before, I started a local Writers/Critique group. One of the rules that we instituted was that you should have something to critique every meeting. We did allow for the occasional missed meetings, but we were looking for an overall participation rate. Last meeting, I didn't drop anything off, so in order to follow my own (stupid?) rules, I need to have something for this meeting.
When I write, my first drafts are bad. I have sudden POV changes, I change from third person present tense to third person past tense on a whim. I haven't yet put any first person POVs into a third person POV work, thank goodness. I really can't hand in the first draft stuff for critique, it'll get torn apart, and rightfully so.
For the last few days, I've been moving my first scene from its first draft stage to something more solid, something that fits in with what a scene should be (POV characters goal moving through to POV characters disaster, with multiple motive-response sequences in it, blah blah blah). I've found it to be exceedingly slow work. The thing is, I'm enjoying it. I like going through and making sure things are structurally correct. I enjoy sitting on a word or a turn of phrase, making sure it brings across the emotion or sentiment I want. I thrill at making sure my similes and metaphors bring out the imagery I want, like the work of a fine painter on canvas.
My problem now is, I wanted my first chapter (three scenes) critiqued the next meeting, and I should have handed in my work last Friday. How am I supposed to get this done by todays extension date? Aaaargh!
As an add-on: I prefer to finish a work before I start revising. The momentum of generating new material builds on previous work, a cake made of many layers building to create a finished product. I hope that revising before I've completed the first draft hasn't taken the wind out of my sails. (Ugh, cliché)