First Drafts

I keep a spreadsheet of every novel I've written, from first to last. (I'm currently working on novel forty-eight.) It's color-coded. Purple for published. Gray for abandoned. Red for current projects, yellow for on submission. Light green for first drafts, dark green for Complete (which ranges from third to fifth drafts depending on the project.)

I currently have seven first drafts on file. Seven. And as I mentioned that's not even counting books abandoned along the way.

I always build in time for a book to sit and rest before revision. This is part of my process and is normal for me, but... I have to be careful. Because I enjoy plotting and drafting more than I do revision, it can be tempting to chase the new shiny idea that always, always promises to be much better than the not-so-great first draft sitting around in a drawer. Finishing books is part of writing. I need to strike a balance between drafting and revising.

One of those seven first drafts is in its natural "resting" phase since I only finished the manuscript a few months ago. However three of them have been resting for over a year and one for over a decade. By this point, I'm unsure if I will ever get back to them, but I'm not yet ready to count them as abandoned.

Things get even more complicated when I write series books. The first drafts need to be written reasonably close together so that the books have a similar feel and tone, but if book one hasn't sold yet, there's very little pressure to revise book two or three. Two more of my first drafts fall into this category.

The last  remaining draft has only been resting for a little over a year. It was intended to be the first in a series, but it's my first attempt writing a new subgenre and it did not go well. There are things I like about the story, but there's some heavy revision to do, and I'm no longer sure a venture into this subgenre is a good idea for my career, so it may also end up abandoned. Time will tell.

Abandoning a novel is always a little bit sad and a little bit of a relief. Writers have many ideas and only so much time. Decisions have to be made about what I put time and effort into.