You know, it’s amazing. I can write literally hundreds of thousands of words but the moment I sit down for a blog post, I’m on Twitter, or YouTube, or Netflix, or staring off into space, drooling like some deranged mental patient (apologies to all my mental patient readers, checking in from your asylums. Get better, I believe in you).
Writing this will take substantially less time than the 3+ years I’ve spent on my fantasy opus. You would think I could bang out a blog post, no problem. You would be wrong (check out the date on my last one).
I think it’s the immediacy of the exchange that yields a level of control I haven’t become comfortable with. Whether I’m working on a short story or a novel, I can spend an inordinate amount of time in the office, safely away from prying eyes, until such time I desire feedback.
The modern velocity of the internet never really appealed to me for that reason. I’m a deep thinker, often to my detriment, and the modern need to blurt out whatever’s on your mind about whatever’s going on (and fast, because pop culture’s Eye of Sauron moves quick) more often reveals my ignorance than my insight.
You could take the previous four paragraphs as a great example of my lack of brevity, because I haven’t even address the title.
A little over a year ago, I finished the first draft of my fantasy novel THE DARKEST FATE. For those unfamiliar with drafts (as I was when I foolishly decided to be a writer), a book is not a one-and-done artform. The oppressive idea of perfection – that what you write will never live up to the idea/image/story in your mind – afflicts all writers, including me, and stops dead the creative flow needed for any artistic endeavor.
Writing a book is a bit like having to make the clay or stone you sculpt from. Imagine Michelangelo spending months or years gathering bits of marble for the Statue of David instead of starting with a solid block or a blacksmith personally mining every bit of metal he forged. Before a novel, as readers will know it, can exist, the materials must be gathered, melted down, and reformed into something new.
My personal favorite guide to drafting is Seven Drafts by Allison K. Williams. Her method helped break me out of a years-long writer block by dividing drafts into seven easily-digestible phases. In particular, her description of a “vomit draft” (aka a first draft) freed me from the aforementioned obligation to be perfect and gave me permission to let the words pour out, regardless of preconceived quality. Drafts 1-3 deal with the creative side of your novel, Drafts 4-5 are more technical in nature, and Drafts 6-7 include sharing your work for personal and professional feedback You can read all about her method here.
Within her framework, THE DARKEST FATE is somewhere between Draft 2, the Story Draft and Draft 3, the Character Draft. I’m often working on both aspects simultaneously and don’t distinguish, which to me just goes to show the system’s applicability.
Another incredibly helpful tip was to define each chapter by One Thing. Anything not related to that Thing (could be related to conflict/theme/character arc/plot progression, etc.), gets the boot. For someone who overwrote the living hell out of his vomit draft, this technique relieves a ton of anxiety.
My current goal is to finish by early 2022. Whether “early” means January or April is very much up for debate. Then, the time will come for agents and editors to tell me how crazy I am.
In the meantime, I’m trying to balance more projects. As rewarding as it is to be creatively monogamous, it doesn’t make much (read: any) money when you’re unpublished. To that end, I’ve started submitting short stories. I’m up to five submissions and just got my first rejection, so that’s going about as well as expected thus far.
I have a comic collaboration with a dear artist friend in the cards, a murder mystery set during a murder mystery party (so meta. Worship me). Last year, I was extremely fortunate to be gifted (by the incomparable writer/producer/director LaToya Morgan) an opportunity to share my screenplay to The Black List. Thing is, I need to finish said screenplay. I didn’t have the creative bandwidth late last year/early this year to complete the script without ignoring the novel. So I put the former aside while I got the novel into fighting shape. But the time to get back to it is here.
My goals by next summer are:
- Finish THE DARKEST FATE and start to query
- Publish a short story
- Finish screenplay for The Black List
- Collaborate on comic
Oh, and I’m getting married next summer too. Thankfully, weddings are infamously stress-free affairs so I’m sure organizing and paying for a large event will really relax me*.
*I love you Angie 🙂
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