Writing Advice
I Made a Huge Writing Mistake: Here’s What I Learned From It.
Mistakes Can Be Our Greatest Teachers
When I first put words to figurative paper, I didn’t have a master plan. There was no goal, there was just me, a story and a desire to put it somewhere to preserve it.
I did not plan to show my novel to anyone except maybe my family or closest friends and that was only if they asked to read it. So I was free, free, free — with endless creativity, it seemed — and endless words.
The Problem
I wrote a novel. It was a novel I loved. The novel became a thing that I no longer wanted to hide, but… The novel was 1.5 million words.
To put that into perspective for those of you who may not be in the know, the average debut novel in my genre (which I determined all too late was paranormal romance) is 70,000 to 100,000 words. No wonder it took me so long to finish! I wrote the equivalent of over ten books.
What. Have. I. Done.
I’ll tell you what I did: I created a pretty decent pickle of a situation for myself, that’s what! It’s not like I could chop it up into exactly ten perfect creations, each with its own wonderful beginning, middle, climax, and satisfying ending — writing without any kind of pressure meant many of those scenes were more or less just for me! So what the heck did I do!?
I had to cut… And cut… And cut…
The term is “kill your darlings.” Well, darling, I had so many to kill that I may as well be the next Bay Harbor Butcher (Dexter anyone?)! Now listen, I am a pantser by nature, but for the sake of making my encyclopedia-sized novel (being generous by under-exaggerating) into something readable, I had to give myself a defined plot. On paper. Yes — it already had a plot — but remember, I did this all for fun!
I had to pretty much reverse-engineer my book! I sat down and determined what the official main plot was. Then I had to ask myself, what scenes are essential? Those scenes had to stay, of course. But then what else? What scenes do I absolutely adore? What keeps me glued? Okay, I will keep those too. And then I asked myself this: What scenes do I feel ‘just okay’ about? Those had to go! ‘Just okay’ was not okay. I even cut some chapters I adored but that ultimately served no purpose to further the story. It hurt. ‘Killing’ something you spent years on— but it was a necessary step. I became a cutting machine!
Now that the plot, the themes, the timeline and the inciting incident were clearly determined, I had a much more streamlined book. Everybody knows first drafts are usually garbage. They are a dumping ground of ideas. Beautifully creative trash— but garbage all the same. And embarrassing. So once I reorganized all of it, I then went through two rounds of revisions before I was more or less happy — and guess what? I may not have had enough of the good stuff for ten good books, but it turned out I had enough for four. Four more or less drafted books with plots and inciting incidents and endings. I could not believe it!
Oh, and by the way — I wrote it all third person past tense and then changed it to first person present tense after the fact.
Yah know — because I love to make more work for myself! For this particular book, I found it worked better. I thought long and hard about it before deciding I needed to undergo such an endeavor. Some people can’t stand present tense. I’m clearly not one of them.
Imposter syndrome (or as I call it — the devil) would have me believe this means I am a bad writer. This means I failed. And those four books I managed to salvage are obviously awful because of where they came from. Don’t listen to the devil! He is, after all, the father of lies.
The takeaway
Now when I draft, I have a crystal-clear understanding of my goals from the start. I determine what word count I am aiming for. I loosely plot it out (but ‘pants’ the scenes/chapters themselves because it’s in my nature). I make sure to identify my themes, my inciting incident, and I think about not only how I want the novel to end, but how I want the series to end. I know my genre, I know my tense. In the end, all of this — it made me a better writer. Failing made me a better writer.
So it wasn’t a colossal waste of time in the end, after all.
Tell me, when has failing made you a better writer? What was the biggest hiccup so far in your writing journey? I’m dying to know. Let’s learn from one another!
