One draft down
A few days ago I finished the first draft of the book I've been working on.
The draft is about 111k words long and took a little over six months from start to finish. My work rate during this time was wildly uneven. I wrote 40k words over the first fortnight in a frenzy of hyperfixation (much of which I later had to rework), then plunged into the pit of despair at the end of January and didn't write at all for almost two months. But I finally got back on the horse and finished it off.
I feel pretty good about this draft! There are already a million things I want to change (particularly in the second act), but as first drafts go, it feels like a success. I now have a much stronger grasp on the characters I'm writing about, the world they inhabit, and the journey I want to take everyone on. Some things worked, some things didn't, and I can mostly tell which is which.
Most importantly of all, I feel like all the bones are there. I look at this thing and think there's a story I'm really excited to tell. And I really fucking love these characters!!! They are my special babies!!!
This isn't my first crack at writing an original novel. I finished the first draft of a different book last summer feeling a mixture of frustration at how dissatisfying everything was and relief that I could stop working on it. But with this one, I can't wait to keep going.
I'm being intentionally cagey about the actual contents of the book, but I still have a lot of random thoughts about the writing process, so here's what's been working:
Writing at a consistent time
I've settled into a schedule: the period between finishing work and eating dinner is my writing time.
I make a lot of recipes that need to cook for an hour or two. At 6pm, an alarm on my phone reminds me to make dinner. I sort out the stewpot and the rice cooker and so on, then write for as long as it takes. (Sometimes a little longer. We've had more than a few 9pm dinners.)
The downside is that trying to write at any other time of the day feels Weird and I struggle to do it, but oh well.
Using Scrivener to stay organised
God I love Scrivener so much. I've been using it for a few years at this point and I still think it's the absolute tits. Breaking the draft into individual chunks so you don't have to stare at the whole thing all the time is a gamechanger, and so is being able to summarise and tag each chunk. I have all my character bios and worldbuilding stuff nicely organised. If I was trying to do this in a traditional word processor I think I would be going insane.
My love for this app will really kick in when I properly start restructuring in the edit and become a complete sicko for custom metadata.
Using the Notes app to create a dumpster fire
I have a file in my phone's Notes app where I stuff all my 2am ideas for the book. It's now over 5,000 words long and completely unorganised. I have no idea how I'm going to wrangle it, but just scrolling through it makes me excited anyway.
Updating this website
I've been using the Project Undertow page as a daily progress log. Honestly I can't imagine anyone else reads this page or finds it remotely interesting, but it keeps me slightly accountable and I like having a record of my progress.
Writing what I want to read, not what I think will sell
The first draft of the other book was definitely written with marketability in mind. I had some ideas I thought were fun, but "How do I sell this?" was always at the back of my mind. Ultimately I think it made the book less interesting, and me less motivated to write it.
This one, I wrote for a target audience of me. I can't imagine it being picked up by a publisher or becoming a smash hit on Kindle Unlimited. It's a weird combination of genres (cli-fi western romance) with a setting that leans into all my worst anxieties and a heroine who regularly commits the grave sin of being Unlikeable. But it's absolutely 100% my shit, and I love it.
Time for a break
My plan is to take a month out before I get back on the second draft. I need to let my ideas settle. I've also started writing some silly fanfic, partly for a change of pace and partly because it's been aeons since I've shown my work to another living soul and I'm getting serious comments withdrawal.
Then it's time to edit.
Tearing this draft apart is going to be messy and scary. I can't wait.