One-In One-Out

Don't you just love it when a writing project develops legs and waddles in a completely different direction to the one you'd carefully plotted out for it?

Back in November, I wrote about the perils of naming a walk-on character in the fourth draft of my current WIP. One of my protagonists had walked into a cafe and started chatting to the owner. It's very unusual for me to actually want to write heterosexual romances into my novel drafts but these two just clicked. So I began hastily thinking about rewriting that protagonist's arc a little bit. Fine. It was going to be tricky but I could do it.

But something else was niggling. My other protagonist becomes embroiled in a fling halfway through the novel that doesn't add much that couldn't be taken on by another character. The more I thought about it, the more I had to concede that my novel was operating a one-in one-out policy of its own accord and I'd be foolish to argue. For all the good reasons it threw at me to bring in Ed, there were correspondingly sound ones to remove Selina.

This character extraction is proving a little trickier. I've been working from a heavily marked-up third draft with notes that are now completely obsolete as I rewrite entire scenes from scratch. To combat that sensation of being adrift, I've created a chapter check list about what needs to be added/removed in each chapter. Once the fourth draft is done some earlier chapters will need ironing out to remove stuff that's now irrelevant. Yet it's all perfectly doable.

The fourth draft's currently at 31,170 words and I'm making slow and steady progress. I'm labouring under the assumption that the novel knows what it's doing. Let's hang onto that for as long as possible, shall we?

And the good news? At least I'm writing again.

Let's Start at the Very Beginning...

I hope that title put 'Do Re Mi' in your head. It was rather intended to. Though this post isn't about musicals, it's about writing (for a change!). 

I've gone back to working on 'Lily', the first novel I completed. While the document is labelled 'Fifth Draft' there was an aborted attempt way back in the day so it's more like the sixth. Instead of going through it with a luminous pen, though, I'm typing the whole thing out from scratch. I generally do that with second drafts because there's so much to change but at this point it might seem a little silly, like giving myself far more work to do than I need to. 

However, it has the benefit of making me think things over. My sentence structure's evolved a lot since I last toyed with the novel and I'm more confident generally. There are some additional plot aspects I'm trying to weave in as I go but I wanted to make sure as much as possible had been looked over critically. I want this novel to be the best it can be, after all. 

So it's a lot of work and it doesn't end here. I plan on another pass through once I've finished this to check and improve syntax and grammar then I want to read the whole thing aloud. I'm not sure how long all this will take but I have other projects to intersperse with this one - many other projects. Not to mention that PhD which is taking up a good proportion of my time at the moment. I'm only really allowing myself to work on the novel after nine o'clock at night which means, of course, that some nights I just can't bring myself to. Which is fine. I've got my priorities and my PhD is top of that list, no question. But I've always been a multi-tasker. 

My inclination is to get this draft finished so that I can focus my attention on NaNoWriMo in November. Perhaps that isn't realistic but I'm going to give it a go. Because, really, I've got the words on the page, it's just a case of mixing them all up to make a novel. Right, Maria?

In Which I Discuss All My Major Writing Projects...

It occurred to me yesterday how much better I've become at completing drafts. I remember when I first started my MA we were asked what we particularly wanted to get out of the course - my answer was to finish something. Of course, an MA isn't the best place to do that (I have two unfinished projects from that year) but it provided some of the tools and my stubbornness provided the rest. My first complete manuscript actually came from my first NaNoWriMo. That idea of fighting with myself (and a certain friend, she knows who she is) was the push I needed. But since then I've morphed into a writer who likes to damn well complete first drafts when I've got them off the ground. The problem now is that I have a stack of things to redraft and precious little time to do it in.

Here's a list of my current projects that I consider 'off the ground'. There are countless others that are languishing on the top shelf of my musicals DVD bookcase glaring at me every time I want to watch The Wizard of Oz or Funny Face but we'll continue ignoring them for now or my brain really will melt from overwork. Note: I call all my novels by the name of my protagonist until I can actually come up with titles. I hate titles. That's a rant for another day.

1. 'Lily' - The most developed of all, this was the novel I wrote and completed for my first NaNoWriMo. Since then it's gone through two and a half further drafts before I aborted the half and started afresh. I'm about 31,000 words into the fourth/fifth draft now. 
2. 'Danni' - Apparently this has been through four drafts, though I can't remember all that pain. One thing I do know is that I just opened the first draft for a peek and spotted some characters I can't remember. That's a good thing, means I managed to change it beyond recognition but I may be at the point where the first draft will help me plot where I go next. It needs...something. I just to figure out what. The fourth draft came in at around 69,000 words. 
3. 'Liz' - One first draft finished and I have decent plans for the second. Obviously needs beefing up a little at 55,000 words but this one did start out as a novella so... 
4. 'Lauren' - Another NaNoWriMo victory, this time from 2011. Had a lightbulb moment about this one very recently (two days ago) so this is definitely ready for work. Again, it needs development at 54,000 words. 
5. 'Max' - The least said about this one, the better! I didn't want to write it in the first place but I was...compelled. No doubt I'll be compelled to write the second draft too and, unfortunately, I do have some ideas about development. It needs it, coming in at 51,000 on the first draft. 
6. 'Vic' - My most recent NaNoWriMo victory. Very short at around 51,000 words (again!) but I like this one. Definitely needs work but definitely has potential. 

When I write it out like that it almost looks impressive. Of course, there are still the more major ones that got away. 'Rosie', my first MA project, got me my highest MA mark and the first few chapters comprised of about 10,000 words. I keep meaning to go back to that and I do have a full plan. However, not the time! My second MA project, 'Freya', was the piece I used for my dissertation and is around 19,000 words long at the moment. It's a bit of a departure for me, a fantasy novel of sorts. But I have it on decent authority that it worked so I really should go back to it. A little something out of the ordinary is good for the muse - or so I just made up. 'Mervyn' is something that's been hanging around me for a few years in various forms but so far I've only got it up to 4,000 words. It deserves more and I swear I'll get back to it...some day. 

So much to do and so little time. It's probably not surprising that juggling this heap of stuff with my PhD sometimes gets a little overwhelming. But maybe that's the fun of it. I like to be challenged, at least in this way. However, I wouldn't say no to a few weeks off! I'm melting...

NaNoWriMo Draft Finished

It may have taken me another two weeks to finish the final chapters after the mad rush of November but the first draft of the novel is complete. It's a little (okay, very) light at 53,756 words but the difficulty I've had in drawing it to an end means I'm just relieved it's down on paper. I've spent a week building up to the big kiss and trying not to write it. Looks like I was as much of a coward as my protagonist!

I feel as exhilarated and as tired as I did when I finished my last first draft back in October. So I've now got four manuscripts I'm dithering about with. Plenty of rewriting to be done on all of them and plenty of PhD work to be done between now and the end of January. Who cares? I've accomplished something else before the end of 2011 and at this stage that's a huge surprise!

I'm going to drift into contentment with Bing to keep me company. This is one of his lesser known songs but I do like it.

Another First Draft Finished

It feels exquisite to say that I've completed another first draft of a novel. That makes three complete novels I'm rewriting and reworking. Getting to the end of an original draft gives me the ultimate shiver down my spine: it's all neatly packaged away to be looked at again in a few months. No characters hanging partway down cliffs as I dither about what to do with them. I know one thing for a fact: the things I have done to my beloved characters Lizzie and Eve in this first draft will be markedly different to the ones I'll put them through in the second draft. It's a positive thing that I already know what changes I want to make next time around. I don't have any illusions that this baby is ready to be handed over to friends and relatives just yet.

So why did I bother finishing it if I knew that was the case while I was writing the second half of the novel? Well, it's a lot easier to rewrite something if you have a whole to work from in the first place. And, besides, not all of what I've written is junk. It tells me a lot about my characters and their relationships with each other. I wouldn't sacrifice this imperfect first draft for a perfect half draft with no ending in sight. You have to finish to start over.

I can pinpoint exactly when this idea sprang into my head. It was during the Wakefield Drama Festival 2011 at the beginning of June. It all came from noticing the woman sat in front of me. The initial setting altered from a working theatre to a converted one currently serving as a crumbling cinema. I started the draft on 6th June and meandered along with it quite happily. The first third was a lot easier to write than the rest. I admit the last few weeks with it have been painful. I've been forcing words from my fingertips with the promise of chocolate and tea at the end of it. Well, at least the bribes worked!

First draft total word count: 55,033.

Feelings towards my protagonists: still adore them.

Feelings towards my plot: needs work but it's not too shabby.

All makes for a reasonably content Lucy!

Crunching The Fourth Draft Figures

Now I've come down from the elation of actually closing the document housing my fourth draft and sending it off for a lucky someone to read, I decided to open my spreadsheet of daily totals and see how the whole endeavour panned out. Please tell me I'm not the only writer obsessed with statistics. It's a habit I picked up in my last job and, actually, all my PhD stuff is organised onto spreadsheets that do several wonderful but useless things. I like the information there, so I can berate or congratulate myself as necessary, So, let's take a look.

I started the fourth draft on 16th January and completed it on 6th April. My calculation there is that it took me 81 days.

I wrote nothing for this particular story on 31 days of the 81. That means I only really worked for 50 days on it. That makes my average word count over the days I actually wrote 1361 words.

On 27 days I wrote less than 1000 words.

On 15 days I wrote between 1000 and 2000 words.

On 3 days I wrote between 2000 and 3000 words.

On 5 days I wrote more than 3000 words.

My highest daily word count was my last (6821) and my lowest was 324 on 26th January.

Well, I have to say, I like those figures. They're not too shabby. It proves that I could complete a draft in two months if I worked everyday. It also proves that the slowly-but-surely method yields results. I didn't manage to meet my minimum target of 1000 words on more than half of my working days and yet I still completed the thing. My five 'super-spurt' days were pivotal in the success but it would only have taken me a few more weeks had I stuck to lesser amounts.

I shall now stop dwelling over the fourth draft. I'll have enough to contend with when I deal with the next one...

The Repeating Finish Line

Last night I finished the fourth draft of my manuscript. As I stared wide-awake at the ceiling several hours later, I worked out that it was indeed my fourth draft (I have been puzzling over this) because my third one was a non-starter. I began enthusiastically then gave up and went back to the drawing board. I'm still counting it as a draft because of all that pointless thought that went into it. Then again, it was all part of the process. It just felt like a complete waste of my time. Anyway, as I ran through the novel again in my head at two o'clock in the morning, I began to think about the different types of manuscript completion, at least the ones I've encountered.

Firstly, you've got the idealist souls. These are the people who rush enthusiastically to the end of their first draft and believe that their job is done. Of course it's perfect: they wrote it. Why wouldn't it be perfect? Distance is alien to them and perhaps they start submitting the manuscript straight away to anyone they can think of. If they're an absolute genius of Dickens or Woolf proportions then it gets them where they want to be. For the rest of us, we must start scribbling away at that second draft, often a major overhaul.

Once you close in on the end of that draft you become an optimistic soul. You've probably lost your initial enthusiasm for your project but you recognise what you have now is better. However, since you've spent all this time fiddling about with the plot and characterisation, your prose reads like cardboard. Your images are all muddled up and at some point you described your protagonist in very biblical language which may or may not indicate you believe him to be the saviour of mankind. It needs fixing.

When you enter the third draft you're more of a hopeful soul. You're praying that the novel will be done at some point but you think you might have numerous medical conditions before it is. But, still, when you reach the end of it, it looks better than it did at the beginning. Of course it does. It's not like you'd waste time, is it?

Then you enter the stage of the obsessive souls. These are the people who are happy with their plot, happy with their characterisation but can't leave the manuscript alone. The number of drafts spreads into the teens, with no real tangible differences between them. Perhaps a word has been altered or an image bettered. This novel isn't going anywhere, except through the printer so you can edit a few words again.

I realise that I'm in danger of falling into the latter category. I'm insistent that there needs to be a fifth draft of this manuscript and I swear I'll consider letting it go after that. However, I do have a legitimate reason for another edit: I've substantially changed plot points in my fourth draft and, as a consequence, I need to check all that makes sense and do some polishing.

Will I be able to let it go afterwards? I may need some of you kind readers to pry it from my hands...