My current word count on MAYBERRY WITH MONSTERS (I've got to give this story a real name) is at 20,082. After working on it for three months, it's probably a small amount of words in the grand scheme of things. However, I'm rather proud of it.
I started this story in the summer of 2010. I went through three false starts, and then simply quit. My problem was that I didn't trust myself. I would get irritated because the story in my head wouldn't match the one on paper.
So I took a step back for a year and convinced myself that every first draft sucks. Every. Single. One. If someone tells you they wrote a perfect first draft of a novel, they're lying.
This time, I've learned to let go, and it's turning out better than I expected. Dani and Josh are finally telling the story equally. Joey is a little more mysterious. Lina is getting more of a storyline. And the fictional town is really starting to resemble my hometown.
I wanted to finish by the end of this month so I could be ready for NaNoWriMo, but it might take me four months to finish this draft. And that's a lot better than the nine months it took me to draft WHITE SPIRIT.
Now, I'm off to add even more words before work.
How did you make it through the first drafts of your novels?
Fie Eoin's first draft took me years, but I was only writing it for fun when I felt like it :P Every other first draft has been a NaNo project, and if I didn't finish it during NaNo I would just keep plowing on until it was done (usually January). Or I'd drop it and never come back in the case of After Ancient (so bad. SO BAD.).
ReplyDeleteBasically I just try to write it as fast as I can. Of course that means I end up re-writing, but I like that better than editing ;)
I finished the first draft of The River in Winter in about 8 months, writing every day on the ferry or bus. I won NaNo last year by putting in 1700+ words a day without fail. For me it's more about consistency than speed, but NaNo helps because there's no time for self-doubt or extended negotiations with the internal editor.
ReplyDeleteyes - first drafts always suck. The point of them is just to get it down on paper. Then you edit and revise and rewrite and the final version still isn't exactly what's in your head but it's close enough that you can be at peace with letting it go.
ReplyDelete"One of the biggest, and possibly the biggest, obstacle to becoming a writer... is learning to live with the fact that the wonderful story in your head is infinitely better, truer, more moving, more fascinating, more perceptive, than anything you're going to manage to get down on paper. (And if you ever think otherwise, then you've turned into an arrogant self-satisfied prat, and should look for another job or another avocation or another weekend activity.) So you have to learn to live with the fact that you're never going to write well enough. Of course that's what keeps you trying -- trying as hard as you can -- which is a good thing." - Robin McKinley