I Wrote A Book...Again

I finished writing my rough draft of Feral eight days ago. You'd think it would have been a bigger deal. I mean, I wrote a book. But finishing the book came and went in my life with little remark.

I think there were two main reasons for this. 1.) I was busy. O and I are at work 50 hours per week, we had scheduled our mandatory summer overtime, we had a baptism class, and we became Godparents. 2.) Even more likely why I didn't get super worked up about it, I knew in my gut I wasn't done.

I thought I knew myself as a writer. I write long and make lots of cuts during revisions. This was the case with the last novel I wrote, this has been the case with most short stories I've written. I thought it was just a given.

I was wrong.

When I finished the zero draft of Feral, it clocked in at 65,000 words. Don't get me wrong, I realize this is long enough to be a full YA for some writers, and not every story is the same. I was just a bit flabbergasted that I'd written something so short. So when I didn't jump and dance and celebrate at my zero draft being done, I thought it was just because I'd done this before, and I knew I had lots of revising and editing to do before it was ready to go out into the world.

Well, I've just finished doing my first read through and taking notes on what needs to be fixed. And I have a new theory. I didn't get super excited because in my gut, I knew a had more to write. After my first read-through, I now have a list of 29 scenes that need to be written or re-written. Which sounds very big and scary, but I'm more excited than anything.

29 scenes sounds like a lot. But looking over the list, it varies from an entirely new scene that needs to be written beginning to end from scratch, to a three paragraphs of a scene that have to be slightly re-written because something changed in the plot.

O asked me for an estimate of how long I think it will take to get through the list. Honestly, I'm not really sure. I don't think it will be very long, given how excited I am to get it done. But you never know what kink will pop up. But I do know one thing. It will get done faster if I get to work on it. So, hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work I go.

Tortoise vs the Hare

I had several false starts on my WIP. My current draft now stands at:

I've basically torn this thing apart so many times as I've gone, that I've removed nearly as many words from the file as I still have left in it. You'd think, that if I were a normal person, that would make me frustrated or sad. Lately it's been making me a little giddy. Yes, I know, well adjusted I am not.

But here's the thing. I recently had hit that part of the book where I hated it, couldn't stand it, was absolutely sure it was all crap. So far, for just about everything I've completed, that kicks in about a third of the way through and last until I hit the last third. I spend a third of the the thing I'm writing convinced I've spent countless hours typing useless drivel.

And I would have done so with this one too. Except! Except, I have all those wrong words to look back at. Which I did this weekend. And then I gave my current draft a once over. They may not all be the right words, but they're mostly in the right place. Which supplied me with a little pick me up that kept me from hating this book or thinking it's awful.

It may have taken me awhile, but this book is nearly halfway, and well on track to be done in late July or early August, in pretty decent shape. Don't get me wrong, I'll have my work cut out for me when I start revisions. Who doesn't? But I'm more confident about this book, than I have been anything else I've written, so far.

So here's crossing my fingers, plugging away--current goal is at least 1k/day--and hoping when I hand it over to some crit partners, they don't think it's a steaming pile.