A couple of weeks ago I finished writing the second (haha no, it’s still the first) draft of my first book, which I have named for now #angstyspaceopera, and it still feels weird despite the fact that I’m already deep in the process of drafting my second one (which doesn’t have a tag yet- I’m working on it though).
First and second drafts, they both took me a full year to write and I have to say, I’m thankful it’s finally done because I came this close to hating it. I started the first draft in June 2015 with absolutely no intention for the words I was vomiting on the paper to be anything other than what I had been writing all those years: self-indulgent scenes of my favorite tropes that I keep to myself and I revisit when I want to read something that I will, absolutely, like.
This, technically, means that apart from caricatures and empty cells, I hadn’t tried in the past to write original characters that were complete, realistic and complicated. There had been some attempts, of course, but due to me lacking the motivation and the focus and the commitment to the projects, they never ended up anything but names in some scenes, anything but fleshed out. Even now, after dedicating a whole year trying to write the same characters, I still don’t know if they make any sense or are as interesting as I think they are.
Moreover, as I started writing I thought possibly for the first time in ever, well, what happens after that? And after that? And after? Something akin to a plot jumped into my mind but it was terrible, what with my not planning anything at all and going with the flow and any idea that came to my mind. In the end I had this first draft of 90k words that was full of plot holes and kind of empty in the conflict and character development department.
So, yeah, this project was a challenge in multiple ways.
During my NanoWrimo I decided to outline the story using what I had as a first draft, re-plotting and changing anything that weighted the narrative down. Some pasts changed, a couple of new arcs were introduced and internal conflict made its appearance for the first time to more people than the main character (yay!).
But re-outlining meant only one thing. Rewriting.
Right now, and after all those months, it’s very difficult to say accurately how many words I threw away, changed or rearranged. In spite of that, I do have a file on Scrivener with all the scenes I discarded completely and it’s about 32k. Rewriting that book was a task. I had never done this before, revise in such a huge scale, moving from scene to scene and keeping what I liked or some times, throwing away what I liked because it didn’t serve the new plot, reimagining pasts and adding more action scenes and upping the antes for the characters.
Needless to say it took me forever, almost seven months.
What I have now though is a second draft of 110k that in its most parts is still a first draft, considering I wrote 70% for the first time. It still has plot holes, it still has things that need to be fixed, but it is something I can, finally, work with. It’s a story that I can look and actually thing that it can be – it is a book. More revisions and edits are sure to come, after all, this is still a second draft (really, it’s still a first draft), but I don’t mind. Right now, I’m letting the story sit, taking some distance from it so that when I go back, I’d be able to see it with a different eye and recognize its flows easier.
What I took though from this adventure, among technical and writerly things, is the experience of going through such a big project and learning out about dos and donts over my process, without giving up. There were moments that I wanted to say fuck it, and throw it away in the wind; there were moments that I thought what I was writing was absolutely genious despite of the fact that it certainly wasn’t; there were moments that I couldn’t put words together to save my life. But, it was a process that I had to go through to learn more about myself as a writer and I don’t regret that. Even if what I wrote ends up in my drawer, it will always be a great experience.
Words are words, and they’re never wasted.
A couple of changes in my process that I’m currently following while I draft my second book:
- I need to outline. I can’t write a story if I have no idea where it’s going. I’ll fuck up, and then I’ll have to rewrite the whole shit and thanks, but no thanks. Planning is a thing I’m definitely doing from now on.
- My first draft, which is always going to be the most terrible one, will be handwritten to its majority. I found out that I can’t revise easily in a great scale on my computer so I’m testing how transcribing from paper to digital will work. In the past, and for individual scenes, it had always worked great because when I write longhanded, my mind works in weird ways and I can imagine things with a freedom that I don’t have when I’m typing, and, in addition, I’m editing while I transfer the text to Scrivener, which means I have something a bit better than a first draft to work with.
- Writing chronologically. Instead of jumping from scenes that I like to scenes that I like, leaving all those that I find harder for the end, thus making writing feel a burden as time passes, I’m going to try and follow the story exactly as it goes. Of course, scenes will move and change, but since I’m handwriting the thing and I have the leeway of not-writing-beautiful-words-because-it’s-a-first-draft, I don’t care if the scene that I find hard is completed with the poorest vocabulary ever.
- Remember what a first draft is all about. Just tell the story.
I’m currently waiting for a couple of beta readers to come back to me with feedback about the book. What worked, what didn’t. Any leaps in logic or plot holes. I’ll start working on it again in August, with another revision and line edits. I will be very glad to have it finished and work on the summary and the query after that, but it still needs work and I need a break from it.
So, sleep well little book. See you in a couple of months.