Retrofitting a main character

I would really like to learn to write cleaner first drafts. Revision should be for cleaning up sentence structure and clamping down on animated eyes. (My eyes can do many things: dance with joy, shoot daggers, and anything in between.) Revision should NOT be for re-creating the lead male character. In the month that I've been mulling over Treyan's flaws (of which he has too many), a few things have started to click. I even had a major revelation yesterday, which was good timing as today was the day to rewrite in its entirety his introductory chapter, the second one in the novel. Here's hoping that the new and improved Treyan really is new and improved without losing his rambunctious zest for life that made him so endearing in the first two versions.

Revising is going a little slower than I'd hope. I'm the eternal optimist I guess. It's been a bit busier at work than it ought to be in February. But being as I don't really want to revise this novel AGAIN, I'm going to take as much time as it needs now. I won't let it push me. If I work on it with whatever time I have available weekly, then it will get done when it gets done.

I've pretty much decided not to start writing the new novel, Puppet Prince, when the class gets the go-ahead in July. I'm planning to hold off until November and Nano. If each first draft novel requires two (or more) major revisions, it seems logical to allow twice as much time in a year to revise than to write. So the goal is to get this revision of FP done (hopefully its the final biggie), then to revise Marks of Repentance (aka Shann and Taafa), and THEN to revise Quest to be Queen before writing another first draft. I have some critters lined up for each of those. I have promised compensating crits as well, so once those start coming in I'll need to start taking time out daily to work on crits.

Nice and steady will win the race. Sigh.