Dispatches: 100,000 Words — Unable to Contain Them
Views from first draft butte
Dispatches
- [Next] Dispatches From Editing Valley: Revision & More Revision
- [Previous] Dispatches From the Trailhead: 8 Months of Personal Writing Projects in Review
Entry #2 in my ‘Dispatches’ series of updates on personal writing projects.
So, I just stepped away from my writing nook, and am feeling a little pensive. 105,000 words later, draft #1 of novel #2 is resting in the cloud, like a piece of beef pulled from the grill, where it can finally exorcise all its juices and settle for a moment.
This novel began in November, when I sat down to write a bit of prose set in my DND worldbuilding project (which I actually documented getting started on in December). I intended no more than to get some loose ideas out and ‘think’ in the universe I was trying to flesh out.
Eight months later, I’m here, wondering what the hell (or, as my characters are wont to say, ‘in ash’) has happened to me since last fall.
It took a while, primarily because it was written at what feels something like a snail’s pace. I write an hour each morning, every morning, and finish a 5,000-word chapter’s rough draft in about 3 hours of work. Not terrible, but stretched across only an hour each day — with plenty of brainstorming and outlining in between — it takes its time.
As I usually am when I finish something like this, I’m stupidly optimistic, excited, and fairly proud, and am doing my best to consciously crank up the volume on the voice that’s saying ‘please remember that this, in all likelihood, will remain in the cloud until the end of time, and should be conceived of first and foremost as a work of yours, something you did because you enjoyed the act of doing it,’ so I can’t hear the other voice saying ‘IT’S PERFECT PUBLISH IT NOW’
Maybe that’s a me thing. But I suspect it’s at least a little universal.
In terms of next steps, I know that the editing process will be long. I usually go through a long first revision — reading and rewriting from start to finish — with structural changes, a shorter second revision with technical changes, and then a third, final pass for clarity and sanity.
At least, that was how the last project went. We’ll see if this one fares the same.
I‘m writing this update here completely on impulse, having not intended to push anything to Medium today. I guess I just felt like sharing the news, and have also been thinking I need to post some more personal updates to this account whenever I get the inkling.
If you’re still reading this (or anything else I’ve written on Medium), I’ll take this opportunity to say thanks for following along for the ride — I immensely appreciate everyone who’s engaged with my work on this platform in the past year or so that I’ve been on it, and if you’re interested in hearing more about the WIP, do let me know. It’s great to hear from y’all.
Of course, there’s so much more to say on this subject — where this work came from, what’s been happening in my mind has I’ve written, how the process has changed since novel #1…
We’ll see if I can contain it.
