The title says it all—last Wednesday at approximately 12:45pm Eastern Daylight time, I, Ian M. Rogers, finished the rough draft of the Secret New Novel I started 20 months ago.
The moment was surprisingly anticlimactic—as in, I wrote THE END, typed out a few notes for later, then turned off the computer and ate lunch. Writing that last line felt really, REALLY good, but at the same time, in the words of Princess Leia, it’s not over yet, and I’ve got a lot of revising to do.
In the grand scheme, though, the moment was pretty significant. For me, getting the damned thing down on the computer is the hardest part, and takes the most mental energy. It’s often when I feel the most intimidated, procrastinate the most, and in general feel the most stress about the writing process. It’s also a big part of the reason I took a long writing break over the fall and winter to focus on other things, because writing a novel draft is such an exhaustive ordeal.
I’m not quite ready to say what my Secret New Novel is about just yet, but for now, I can say that it’s a comedy novel with fantasy elements, plenty of social commentary, a cast of twentysomething misfit characters, and at least one reference to the Canadian high school drama Degrassi.
Where Do I Go From Here?
Good question—there’s still a LOT of work to be done.
First, I want to take a break: I’ve set aside this week as a writing-free week to catch up on some Day Job editing and other projects and put me in a better place with my To Do list. This should free up my schedule for the next few weeks and leave me better able to focus my morning writing time for revisions. No more than a week off, though—I really want to keep making progress.
I’ll do a separate post about revisions when I actually dive in, but for me, revising involves printing out the manuscript, making changes by hand with a blue pen, then typing them all up while listening to music. It’s still a process that requires a tremendous amount of focus, but WAY less than writing a first draft.
I’ll also continue to workshop the second draft with my writing groups (which I’ll also talk about in a few weeks), since getting early feedback about how the story’s working has been immensely helpful moving forward.
Mostly, though, for me, these next few months will be about sorting through this mess of a draft and really working it into shape. My estimate is that it’ll take another two drafts at least before I’m ready to show the entire novel to readers outside my writing group, and another few polishing drafts after that to get it strong enough to submit for publication.
The good news, though, is that each draft is easier than the one before it, so the process can only go downhill from here ;-)
Anyway, that’s all for now—time to get back to work.