How to Build a Kitchen: Advice for Revising a First Draft

The kitchen in my new house is falling apart.

I don’t mean that in a figurative sense. It is literally crumbling.

In late May, we had several days of heavy rain and high winds, forcing water under the shingles in into one of our kitchen cabinets. We noticed it when it created a waterfall onto the floor. Fortunately, it was confined to one small area and only two cabinets became mini waterfalls.

We had a roofing company come out and got an estimate. Then the roofer didn’t show and didn’t show, and I politely left messages. He finally showed at 6 pm on a Thursday, spent two hours caulking—yes, caulking—and then left. Keep in mind that he didn’t knock on my door to let me know he was here. I happened to be in the backyard, watering the plants so they wouldn’t wither in the blistering Texas heat, when I noticed him up there. I received a bill for $1800.

You read that right. Eighteen hundred smackers for two hours and some caulk. I have definitely chosen the wrong field.

Two days later, more rain and more water in the kitchen. Needless to say, I refused to pay the bill. And I fired the roofer.

I then contacted a roofer recommended by an acquaintance. He came out, gave me an estimate that was half the caulk dude’s estimate, and was very specific about what he would do. I signed the estimate and waited for the scheduler to call. And waited. And waited.

After texting and emailing for two weeks with no response, I was thiiiiiis close to pulling the plug and finding someone else. Oh, that I only had! A crew finally showed up and began the repairs. When they left, I could tell that it was done incorrectly. The shingles overlapped with the seam facing up instead of down. Overlap must face down! I think that’s covered on day one of roofing school.

Contacted the roofer again to explain the problem. No response. Meanwhile, it’s now the July 4th holiday weekend and radio silence from the roofer, but also several days of heavy rains and high winds. My little mini waterfalls became gushers.

Once I sent video to the roofer, he had a crew at my house that day. This time, the roof was installed correctly.

But the story doesn’t end here, my friends. Oh, no. I filed a homeowner’s claim for water damage. An adjuster came out to survey the damage. With some handy-dandy tool, he was able to measure the amount of moisture in the walls. It was a bunch. He said my insurance would cover mitigation and would even schedule it, so I didn’t have to find someone reputable.

And here’s where we get to the crumbling kitchen part. Yesterday, a water mitigation company did their own tests and found water in parts of the house that I had no idea were affected. They removed based boards and found a rotted sill plate under a supporting stud. The supporting stud has about six inches of rot from the sill plate up. It is this stud that is holding up a two-story section of the back wall of the house. And that was just the beginning of their discoveries.

They continued their work and cut out drywall, pulled out sopping insulation, and set up fans and dehumidifiers everywhere. It sounds like a jet is landing in my kitchen. Okay, maybe a Cessna.

But they also cut into the back of the cabinets and found—wait for it! Any guesses?—Oh, you’re so smart. Wet wood attracts termites. The back of the cabinets looked like fine lace and disintegrated to the touch. This leak has been there a long time, friends. A loooooong time.

Today, the crew returns to rip out my cabinets. Not just a couple. The. Entire. Wall. I spent last night emptying cabinets, the same cabinets that I filled only a few short months ago when we moved into what I lovingly call The Money Pit. (Did I mention that my OH is on a business trip and I am dealing with this on my own? He owes me. Big time.)

Looks as if I will be renovating a kitchen! And I will be doing it on the fly, with very little time to figure out cabinets, counters, appliances, flooring, anything really. But at the end, I will have a new kitchen with no lacey wood in the walls and no rotted sill plates.

And why, you might be asking yourself (or me) am I telling you all this, in a blog that is supposed to be about writing?

I promise I have a point, and it isn’t because I need to vent. Okay, it isn’t only that.

Often, going from first draft to revision can feel like this saga of the roof and kitchen. When we work on the first draft, we tend to be precious with it. We receive a Shiny New Idea from somewhere in the universe and dive into our drafts with notions of some perfectly crafted end product. And it is perfect. At first. We swoon over every word, every character, every plot point, every scene. We are convinced that this will not need a revision and is ready for querying.

But after a few days or weeks or even months (I am a big proponent of waiting at least a month so that I almost forget what I’ve written), we can look back with fresh eyes and recognize that we don’t need a character, that our pacing is off, and the middle drags along with the speed of a sloth. We are shocked to see that we failed to give our protagonist agency in a pivotal scene.

These discoveries are normal, part of the process, the sand in the first draft with which we will build sandcastles in the revision, as Shannon Hale says.

What often happens during revision, though, is that we find other problems we didn’t know existed. The termite wood doilies behind the wall, if you will. And every time you try to fix one problem, you reveal another. Your MC didn’t have agency. But why? What might you have missed in the character-building process before you started drafting? Because something was missed. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have let the secondary character or antagonist take this moment away from your hero. Once you figure out what was missing in the character, then you still have to figure out what else that will affect in the entire MS. And it will.

Revision is just that: re-visioning, looking at each aspect of your story anew. It’s the whole If You Give a Mouse a Cookie dilemma. The dominoes keep falling because one action inevitably leads to another leads to another.

The lesson here is to let go of what we think we will accomplish during revision. Sure, start with your checklist and cross things off, but know that every item checked off will add three more check boxes. Go with it. Let the dominoes fall, address them as they come, and eventually, you will have a shiny new kitchen. Or sandcastle. But go for the kitchen because one good rainstorm and the castle is…