The title says it all: last Wednesday at approximately 11:00am Eastern Standard time, I finished Draft 3 of my Secret New Novel.
This comes after several weeks of careful planning, when I counted out the number of writing days necessary to finish Draft 3 if I edited at the rate of one chapter per day. Though my initial plan was to be finished on Monday, February 27th, some extra difficulties with the final chapters put me behind, so I needed the extra two days to bring the ending up the level I wanted.
The February 27th deadline wasn’t a firm one by any means—it was more of a way to keep myself on track so I could plan the weeks leading up to finishing (which included mostly writing days) and the weeks after I finished (which will include mostly typing days). So, I made sure to build in a few extra days where I could write in the mornings if I needed to.
Draft 3 is REALLY important because it’s the draft I’m going to send to beta readers (basically, readers who’ll take a look at the full novel draft with an eye for giving feedback). It also represents the point where I’ll finally, at long last, reveal what the Secret New Novel is actually about on this blog, which is pretty exciting (stay tuned!).
Typing, Typing, and More Typing
As you can see from the pic above, my Draft 3 revisions are all made by hand. When I edit, I print out a copy of the current draft (in this case, Draft 2), then go through chapter by chapter making changes using a pen and a notebook for lengthier additions.
The advantage to doing it this way is that I can more easily see what the draft looks like, along with what I’m adding and what I’m taking out. Having a printed copy also helps me look at the words I originally wrote on the screen with fresh eyes. All of this combined makes it easier for me to see rough spots and weaknesses that I can then go in and fix.
The disadvantage, though, is that typing up all these edits takes a loooooooooooong time, especially with a draft like this that involves extensive rewriting.
Granted, Draft 3 DEFINITELY required less cleanup than Draft 2, so the typing is bound to go faster, but I’m still looking at 20+ hours of typing I want to get through in the next 2-3 weeks (give or take).
I like to work on novel typing either in the late afternoon/evening when I’ve finished everything else for the day, or in the mornings before I check email for the day. Typing for 1-3 hours is usually all I’m good for, and I’ve been trying to break up this much larger endeavor by typing up a little bit every day (including one day on the weekend, since it’s a fairly low-stress task).
I always listen to music when I type, most often something upbeat: today I’ve got a School of Seven Bells album pulled up for the afternoon.
The Editing Process and Final Thoughts
A lot of people assume that writers pull up a fresh Word document every morning and magically type out perfect prose to suit their story that they’d instantly feel comfortable submitting for publication. Others seem to understand that first-draft prose isn’t perfect, but they imagine revision as simply fixing grammar mistakes and tweaking a few sentences.
Most writers, though, I think use some version of Anne Lamott’s Shitty First Draft method (I swear this is what it’s actually called) where they write a really, really rough version of their novel that’s the best they can currently write in that moment.
Writing a Shitty First Draft is helpful because getting a rough, skeletal version of the story down in written form actually helps the writer understand it better. Sometimes you don’t know what questions to ask about your story (or where you want the story to go) until you get your feet wet, so diving right in can help you flesh out the story faster than sitting around thinking about it, or just writing outlines.
Then, after finishing the Shitty First Draft and getting a beginning, middle, and end down on paper, the writer can step back and see a more complete version of the story than the one that was in their heads. The writer can take a week or two away from writing, then (if they’ve trained themselves!) look at the writing with fresh eyes—or, in the words of Neil Gaimon, as if they had nothing to do with its creation.
And that’s kind of my plan moving forward. After getting feedback from beta readers, I want to step away from this novel for a little while and look at Draft 4 with a new perspective. With any luck, this should help me solve any final plot problems, iron out thematic issues, and make sure the characters are all consistent.
…but first I have to finish that damned typing ;-)