Tag: unexpected

How to draft a book

Published on by SJ2 Comments

If you’ve ever wondered how to write the first draft of a book, here’s what I did. I don’t recommend this process.

  1. Be in your mid-life crisis.
  2. Recognize that writing is one of your stress releases.
  3. Be talking with your writer’s group, and get the idea for a book title called “In Too Deep”.
  4. Imagine that In Too Deep would be an awesome name for an erotic book.
  5. Decided to write that.
  6. Notice that NaNoWriMo is coming up.
  7. Start NaNoWriMo without any characters, plot, setting, or anything, knowing only that you’re going to take some of your recent experience and try to write >50,000 words in 30 days.
  8. Finish NaNoWriMo with ~50,500 words (thus WINNING!), but realize that the story is only half-finished.
  9. Write another 10,000 words in the next month, and run out of steam.
    • Because you’ve generally used writing to figure out what the story is, not try to sell it.
    • And now that you know where the story is going, you don’t need to write any more. It’s not that interesting, and you’ve got some other stuff going on, so, meh.
  10. Wait 3 years.
  11. Pick it up again and add another 3,000 words.
  12. Put it down for another 3 months.
  13. Pick it up again and re-read it, and think, “Hey, you know what? I could do this.”
  14. Commit to finishing the draft by December 31, 2019.
  15. Get encouragement from your writer’s group.
  16. Get 3,000 words from the end and keep getting sidetracked by new ideas that come into your head.
    • Realize these are self-sabotaging your completion, because if you actually finish the damn thing, then you’re done and you don’t have something to do.
    • Say “Fuck that shit” to self-sabotage, and decide to write the last 2 scenes without adding anything extra.
  17. Write the next-to-last scene with 3 days left in the year.
  18. Think, Maybe?
  19. Write the last scene.
  20. Basically go, Wait, what did I just do?

Repeat.

Yeah, I don’t recommend that process. But, it worked! I have a draft of a novel. And I’m going to decide by February 11 whether to try to get an agent and traditionally publish, or self-publish.

Any and all comments welcome.