What it Feels Like to Finish a First Draft
Most recently in my author work, I’ve been focusing on two separate projects, and it turned out that I was going to read both of these first drafts in succession. One is an upcoming novella, and the other is the opening 40,000 or so words of the next full-length novel in my Small-Town Escapes series. Reading an early draft, I’ve discovered, is usually pretty fun. I can spot the places that need work, but I feel like I’m often pleasantly surprised by how much of the story is already there.
But if you were to ask me what it feels like the moment I finish writing a first draft...
Well.
Novellas are a little kinder to me. That’s honestly one of the reasons I wanted to write one after In a Desert Daze. Shorter novels are still challenging—building believable chemistry in less than half the page count is no easy feat—but I find them incredibly joyful to write. For comparison, In a Desert Daze had a first draft of around 110,000 words, complete with side plots and characters that were later cut or condensed for the sake of the word count. This new novella is about 35,000. It’s simply easier for me to hold the entire story in my head, and to not overuse “he smirked” a billion times. (Seriously, why must he always smirk??!)
Book 3 has been a very different experience.
Honestly, at 40,000 words, it’s not even a full first draft. While I was on a writing retreat earlier this year, I ran out of steam. I started hating every sentence I wrote, and instead of forcing myself to push through, I chose to set the manuscript aside. I secretly hoped I’d come back to it and like it a lot, but deep down, I was worried I’d just spent a couple weeks writing half of a novel that would never see the light of day.
When I reopened the manuscript last week and read it on my Kindle, I actually didn’t like it…I loved it.
Don’t get me wrong—it needs work. But it is not nearly as doom and gloom as I had imagined. I got teary-eyed reading parts of it. I fell right back in love with the characters and the story, and for the first time in months, I could clearly see exactly what wasn’t working—and, more importantly, how to fix it. The novella will be my focus for the next couple of months, but I’m genuinely excited to return to this book afterward.
So what does finishing a first draft feel like? It’s exhausting as anything, and I always make sure to celebrate with a nice glass of wine, but I’m usually just wanting to crawl into bed and sleep for a few days. Writing the first draft is the hardest part of the entire process for me. Plotting helps me out tremendously, and it still amazes me that a finished novel somehow grows out of a handful of scattered ideas. But every first draft feels like I’ve just finished a mental marathon...only to realize I’ve actually arrived at the starting line.
The good news is that editing is one of my favorite parts. I could edit all day long. And editing means the story exists, and even if it’s messy and imperfect, I get to then shape it into the book I’ve been imagining. And even with how exhausting first drafts can be, that’s the part that makes me excited to sit back down at my computer and get to work.
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