What Happens When You Write a First Draft in Three Months

At the end of October I began writing book three in the Screwing Up Time series. By the end of this month or early February, I should finish the first draft. For me this is an amazing pace. But there are costs. Here’s what happens when your write a first draft in a little over three months.

1. Weeds take over your previously manicured flower gardens. You also curse the mild winter, which should’ve killed off all the fall weeds but didn’t.

2. You forget to reply to emails. So not a good thing.

3. You don’t check your email a hundred times a day, wondering if the agent who has your literary fiction manuscript has made a decision. Okay, you still check your email a lot. But you obsess over it less. Sort of.

4. You forget to clip the dog’s toenails. The dog is thrilled. Your wood floors aren’t.

5. Your youngest child plays way too many computer games. His siblings murmur, gnash their teeth and say, “You made us set a timer and only let us play for 40 minutes a day.” On the other hand, the youngest child thinks you’re a really, really great mom.

Say It Ain't So

Lately, I’ve been getting lots of nudges about my sequel. Usually, the nudges involve throat clearing, pleasant smiles, and words like “So is the sequel almost done?” Those sweet questions encourage me on so many levels. One, it means you liked the first book. (Yay!) And two, it means you’re eager to read the second. (WooHoo!) The nudges help me finish the book when all I want to do is hit my head against a table or throw darts at the manuscript.

But as a reader, I’m sure you can’t imagine what’s taking so long! After all, I finished the first draft a long time ago. The only thing that’s left to do is editing. So here’s a peak behind the curtain at the three stages of editing.

Stage One: Substantive Editing (Also known as Rewriting)

After I finish the first draft and celebrate, I start editing everything that I know is wrong with the novel. Plot holes, increasing/decreasing the roles of certain characters, etc. A lot of writers, me included, leave notes for themselves in the first drafts. Stuff like: “This is horrible, fix it later.” “What happened to character X—he hasn’t shown up in six chapters?” “Set the groundwork for this plot twist in an earlier chapter.” “Does this even make sense?” So all that gets fixed first.

Once the major things are fixed, I work on voice. Making sure that each character’s speech and actions makes sense. Miranda’s words and actions can’t sound like Mark’s. In first drafts, I’m always tempted to use words that I like. But if they aren’t words that Mark would use, they have to change. Then, I check narrative voice (the voice that I choose to tell the story in) and work on consistency and tone.

After I’ve finished all of this, I send the novel to my beta readers. These sainted people are my writing friends who scour the text looking for all the big things that are wrong. This means several sets of experienced eyes are reading the text for plot holes, believability, etc. And guess what? One of my betas found a big issue. Something I couldn’t believe I’d overlooked. Thankfully, even though it was substantial (I was kicking myself that I missed it), it was contained. So I didn’t have to go through the entire text changing things. The problem was limited to a few chapters at the end, and a week of furious rewriting fixed the problem. End of stage one. Sort of.

Stage Two: Line Edits (also called copy edits)

I give my bright and shiny manuscript to my copy editor, who whips out her red pen. Gleefully. (Okay, she probably isn’t gleeful, but it seems that way to me as I hand her my baby.) She looks for smaller things—awkward phrasing, poor word choice, grammar, etc. And those are the only things she’s supposed to find. But they aren’t. She finds something more substantive.

My response? NO!! She must seriously be wrong. I finished the Sub Edits. I know that I if I have to do any more of those, I am going to die.

After I treat myself to a few consoling Haribo raspberries (the European kind that are tangy and not too sweet), I ponder the fact that the line editor might be right. She’s probably wrong, of course. But I should check up on the issue. So I email one of my betas and ask about the issue. Beta agrees with line editor! No! Say it ain’t so. Please!

Don’t get me wrong. I love this story. My betas love the story, even better than the first book. But I’m so tired of it. I want to move on to the shiny new story that’s seductively calling to me in my mind.

So this is where I am. The line edits are 2/3s done. And I’ve hit a snag. Honestly, it’s not that big. And it’s contained, so it should be an easy fix. It’s just that I hoped to be done with line edits by the end of the week. Sigh.

Now I’m sitting with my pages and my gummi raspberries, trying to decide where to begin.

After this, the final stage is proofreading. That’s its own special torture where I sit with the Chicago Manual of Style and obsessively look up things that probably don’t really matter. I’m trying really hard not to think about that. Time for more raspberries.

DIB

I’m sorry I missed posting last Friday. On Thursday and Friday, ISP wizards were at our house fixing our buffering and range issues—so internet access was only sporadically available. Apparently, our 1940s plaster walls were not built with the internet in mind. On one side of said wall the speed was 28 mb/sec. On the other side it was 3 mb/sec. And if you got much further away, it died altogether.

I’m very happy to say that the wizards now have everything fixed. And they only needed to drill a couple of holes in the floor and add new cool electronics.

However, since I didn’t have internet access, I was distraction free and was able to finish my third edit of the sequel to Screwing Up Time. Yay!! It is now going out to beta readers.

My experience got me to thinking. Internet service providers should offer a service to writers. I’m calling this service Deadline Internet Blackouts. Writers (or their agents/editors) could sign up for a DIB whenever a deadline was approaching and the writer was behind. The catch would be that the internet would be shut down until the word count/edit was complete.

Yeah, I realize that computers actually have a button you can push to shut off the internet access. Or, um, you could just not visit Facebook/blogs/etc. until your work was done. But I can’t make any money off that. Anyway, so what do you think? How many people would be interested in DIB? I’m sure that it would be great for students too. Think about it. 

Giddy Trepidation

This morning I have a giddy trepidation. I’m going to start my next edit of the sequel to Screwing Up Time. I'm giddy because I’m about to start an edit that will make the novel closer to the ideal that exists in my mind. And trepidacious because I know I won’t achieve that ideal. Not to mention the fact that I’m trying to learn to use the new version of MS Word and failing miserably.


After I downloaded my documents into the new computer/Word, they weren’t there. Tech guru found them and moved them for me. And I have now been tutored in the proper method of moving files. But I’m not sure that I remember, even after doing it once or twice—tech guru is a follower of the “teach a man to fish policy” of computer literacy. But then tech guru showed me there were multiple ways to accomplish the assigning-the-document-to-the-correct-place task, now I’m confused. I’m claiming my stupidity is post-general-anesthesia confusion. Yeah, I know that was more than a week ago. But that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. However, this morning I somehow deleted all the page breaks in a 200,000 word document—thankfully not the sequel. And the tech guru who is currently at home can’t figure out what I did. This does not bode well. (Not to mention the fact, the dictionary in Word doesn’t recognize “trepidacious,” and I’m pretty sure I spelled it correctly.)  However, I’m assured by the tech guru that I will come to appreciate the new version of Word….I hope so. Otherwise, I’ll be transitioning from giddy trepidation to gnashing of teeth.

This Chapter Will Kill

If you follow my book blog, you’ve seen my happy announcements about the current edit of the Screwing Up Time sequel. Everything was moving along at a nice clip. I told my primary betas (my alpha betas) that I’d be ready to give them the book sometime next week....I was naïve.

I’d yet to meet the chapter from Gehenna. The bog of writerly progress. The editing equivalent of writer’s block. Granted, it is an overlong chapter. So I could see it taking longer than the other chapters. But I had steeled my resolve. I’d locked and loaded my writerly skills: Red pen? Check. Outline to verify earlier plot twists? Check. Kick-the-chapter’s-butt attitude? Check.

Then the chapter kicked back. I read the opening paragraphs. I swallowed. The most boring tripe ever written. But that’s okay. That’s why there’s editing. So I fixed the opening. Then I read it again the next day. YAWN. So I fixed it again. And refused to re-read it the next day. I moved on. The next scene read clunky. The plot was there, but it read like a plot outline. In response, I played a game of Free Cell. (For non-writers, the point of playing Free Cell is to win the game and take that confidence into the edit. Pathetic, I know. But you do what works. I don’t call it “procrastination.” I call it “preparation”.) Afterwards, I went back to the clunky scene and made it less clunky-ish. I decided not to go back and reread.

The next scene was also sleep inducing—of course, climbing a staircase is never a hot plot point, but a writer must do what she can. Normally, you include some character’s emotional reveal. But these are teenage boys (not girls), and they don’t share their emotions as they tread the steps. I did what I could and promised myself that I’d rework it later.

After two games of Free Cell (I lost the first one and you can only edit with a sense of well-being), I read the next scene, which was one of the emotional high points of the novel. The scene was two paragraphs long. What was I thinking? I can understand this mistake in a first draft because I’m an underwriter. But I’d already edited this chapter once before. What was wrong with me then?! I needed multiple games of Free Cell and squares of chocolate to get my writing mojo back.

So now I’m just over halfway through this chapter—I’m beginning to think that it reproduces during the night. Every day I work on it, there seem to be more pages to work on. Then, this morning I woke up with a nasty cold. (Which I’ve already had this season.) And I think it’s the chapter. It’s trying to kill me. And I’m being to feel like I want to succumb. 

Top Ten Reasons You Know Your First Draft is Done

On Friday I finished the first draft of my sequel to Screwing Up Time. (Confetti and cheers.) Though, of course, after I wrote the final word, I thought, “Oh, dear, maybe it’s not really done. Maybe my readers will be disappointed. Or, maybe I’ve written too much and over-gilded the lily.

I figured that other writers must have the same problem. And while I can’t read your manuscript and tell you if it’s done, I think there are outside factors that may strongly indicate when a first draft is complete. So I’ve come up with a checklist.

 “How to Know When Your First Draft is Complete.”

1. Your beautiful flower garden is now being considered for a filming of Tarzan.

2. Your pile of ironing has collected dust.

3. You look in the mirror and discover your eyebrows resemble hedgerows—and the eighties look is not in. (Why can’t that come back?)

4. You’ve emailed your latest WIP (work-in-progress) to yourself, at least two hundred times—after all, you never know when your computer will die.  (BTW, in the old days, writers used to store hard copies in the freezer.)

5. The printed letters on your computer keyboard have worn off. My space bar is actually “grooved.”

6. When your children need you, they IM you.

7. You are adept at writing while cooking, which explains the spaghetti sauce smears across the laptop screen.

8. Your dog throws her water bowl into your lap.

9. Your refrigerator has Tupperware cartons of leftovers that are unrecognizable and move under their own power.

10. Your husband bites your neck and complains that he’s a book widower.

Shifting Gears

In the midst of figuring out how to do publicity for my new book (I’m open to suggestions), it’s time for me to sew Shakespeare costumes. Matt and Jake are both in the play Mid Summer Night’s Dream. Jake is playing Demetrius, and Matt is playing Puck.

Jake really liked his costume from last year (blouson shirt and tunic with faux embossed leather accents). So he said he’d wear it again this year. GREAT. Then, I volunteered to make him accessories. He wants gauntlets and a feathered hat. They will be very cool, but a lot of work. I’ve done a hat before—more broken sewing machine needles than ever for one project. And the gauntlets are studded with metal studs, meaning I probably will need to purchase a studding tool, if there is such a thing. Matt needs a tunic covered with leaves, which should be fairly easy, I hope.  When the costumes are done, I’ll post photos.

For those who are interested, things with my novel are going well at Kindle. The exciting thing this weekend was discovering that a total stranger loved my book and wanted to contact me. (Yay!) I’m still having trouble with Barnes & Noble—their promises to rid me of the imps have not materialized. So I will call them again, and, hopefully, get better promises. As soon as that's done, I'll get back to the Screwing Up Time sequel. I've left Mark and Miranda in a very precarious situation, and I need to rescue them.