It's harder because it is not set in a fantasy world of my own creation. It is on an alien planet, but the people on it are from our planet and there are things I have to research to make accurate. It slows things down and I've ended up not worrying about them in this draft. Instead I am making a list of things I need to research after this draft is done and I will make the appropriate corrections for the next one. Still, it is harder to make it true. Plus its just a big change to go from writing the book I spent three years polishing to a brand new one.
But it is so much easier to write the first draft knowing how many drafts go after it. I don't have to make it perfect. The first draft of a novel is never going to be perfect. I realized this to some degree when I was writing the second, and far better, version of my first novel. If things weren't great, I could ignore them and come back and fix it later.
This time I'm just much more aware of that fact. It's not just the brackets of [insert factual information about this thing later] dotting the pages. It's the words themselves. So I'm overusing one specific word too much in this paragraph? Meh. It doesn't matter right now. The trick is just to get the story on paper (or typed into the computer), to watch it change and take on a life of its own and meander off in unexpected directions. Rough drafts are just that: rough.
There's a great freedom in realizing that. No one but me will ever see this first draft. It doesn't matter how badly I word something (although I do still pause at times, eyes shut, struggling to remember the specific word I'm wanting for that sentence), how awkward the dialogue may be. I am figuring out the story, the characters, the plot. How I word it is unimportant at this stage.
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