Quick recap: When I last posted an update about my Secret New Novel, it was an exciting one. After a year and a half of methodical research, scheduling writing time, agonizing over plot details, and stepping away for one reason or another, I finally, at long last, finished the first draft!!!!!!!!!!11
While the novel still has a LONG way to go, finishing the first draft was a HUGE deal for a number of reasons:
The first is that, for me, drafting an initial story from nothing is the most agonizing part of the process, and by far the most difficult. On days when I have to draft something more complicated than a blog post, I tend to spend a lot of time putting off writing and getting warmed up, which translates into less time at the computer actually putting words on the page. Revising what I’ve already written, in contrast, is far easier, and when I sit down with an earlier draft in front of me that I can look at and improve, I feel less stress and more confidence.
The second reason is that with finishing this first draft, most of the really intense mental brainstorming and creation have already been done. All of the main characters and scenes are laid out in some form, and 90% of the basic beats are there. Of course, some of them are mere skeletons, and others will need to be majorly revised to shift their focus. Others, however, are in better shape and have all the major structural elements in place.
More importantly, though, I don’t need to add any major scenes or characters (which again, for me is the most stressful part), and I feel more confident knowing that the scenes I have in place now that get the characters from Point A to B and onward to Point X and Y are more or less where I want them.
The final reason is purely mental: Up until now I always had a fear in the back of my mind that I just wouldn’t be able to finish this novel, that I’d give up and the sloppy half-draft would sit unread on my computer forever as a loosely assembled series of chapters and notes. When the going got rough, I feared that maybe I’d never be able to publish a second novel to continue my writing path.
Those fears, though, are all gone now—I know I’ve got this.
How Do I Revise?
Over the years, I’ve carved out a revision process that works well for me, and it helps me work existing material into the draft while moving it around and creating new material to fill gaps in the text.
Because I do all of my drafting on computer, my first step is to print out an actual double-spaced hard copy of each chapter separately. This allows me to look through the pages more easily rather than scrolling and searching for different sections. I’m a fairly visual person with writing, so seeing the printed version helps me see how it all fits together.
Then I take my trusty blue pen and go to town with revisions, crossing out sentences, words, and sections that don’t feel right. As I do this, I’ll write new sentences, words, and sections above them and in the margins (this is where doubles-spacing helps!). I’ll also move sections around using arrows and indicators to myself, so what starts off on page 5 can easily be moved to page 2 with a few careful notes.
Often, though, a section will need expanding: say that a section on page 7 is too short and doesn’t go into enough depth about the characters or the situation at hand. Maybe the existing section is only two paragraphs, but needs to be three paragraphs, or even an entire page or more. Here, there’s obviously no room to write all this in the margins, so I’ll use a different tactic.
When I revise my hard copy of the draft, I’ll also keep a Campus notebook where I’ll handwrite these longer sections that need expansion: I’ll write a number 1 with a box around it on the printed page, then write the same number 1 with a box around it in the notebook to indicate that the new section should be inserted at that point. The new section could be anywhere from half a sentence to multiple pages in length, and the number system helps keep everything organized and clear.
While I’d absolutely LOVE to show a detailed view of this process, I’m still not quite ready to show any of my new novel draft just yet, so here’s an example from a later draft of MFA Thesis Novel where I worked on cleaning up the prose and deleting unnecessary words:
5th to 6th draft revisions of MFA Thesis Novel (Chapter 4) from July 2014. Notice the boxed star halfway down the page where I’ve crossed out a line and written its much longer replacement in the bottom margin, linked by a second boxed star.
Finally, when all that’s done, I’ll type up all the edits into the existing Word file (using separate files for each chapter), usually in the evening while listening to music. This is a fairly mindless process that I don’t count as writing time per se, and I’ll often slot it in for a slow time, or when I don’t feel like doing more intense work.
Final Thoughts
Now that the first draft is done and I’m feeling much better about this project in general, I expect to make more progress over the coming weeks. In the past month I’ve revised the first three chapters and started on chapter four (the novel as-is now has just over twenty chapters). The first four chapters are also by far the roughest in the draft as I figured out what the hell I was doing, so I expect to pick up my editing pace as I move forward.
A lot of people have been asking what my Secret New Novel is actually about. While I’ve openly been telling close friends about it and sharing chapters in progress with my writing groups, I’m not quite ready to share it on the blog yet.
That time, though, is coming soon, so stay tuned for updates where I’ll be sharing a lot more ;-)