The Writing Process 1: Slave to the Draft

I've just come off of a small ficathon, and to be honest, it wasn't one of my better experiences.

For anyone who's not familiar with the concept of a ficathon, here's a brief summary of mine:

To start with, a bunch of writers first get together and sign up for the pseudo-contest, with each writer submitting two separate story seeds. The story seeds are then shuffled up, with each participant getting back two seeds that he or she did not originally provide.

Each writer is then given one month to write a short piece of fiction - say, five hundred to two thousand words - centering around one of the two story seeds. If the writer can combine both seeds into one story, then so much the better - in fact, it testifies to the writer's skill and ability.

As the ficathon was based off an fan fiction list for the Legend of the Five Rings game, all submissions had to be based on the Legend of the Five Rings universe.

Over the course of a month, I plowed through no less than six separate drafts for a story before finally completing the last one and sending it in. I figure that, by discussing these drafts, I should be able to gain some form of insight to the writing process that I follow - perhaps find some avenue of improvement for future writings.

In the meantime, though, I'll leave you with the story seeds I received:

1. While guarding a caravan for his lord, a samurai is faced with an unexpected form of danger.
2. Stung by a lover's betrayal, a samurai plans an appropriate revenge.