That Finished First Draft Feeling

 Yesterday, I finished a first draft of the cozy fantasy Walking on Moonlight that I've been working on since January. It came out to 94k which is a long first draft for me (65-80 k is more typical), but no where near the monster 140k that Little Mansion in the Jurassic topped out at.

As always, even though there is at least two more drafts and much work to be done, I like to spend a little time basking in the glow of accomplishment. I created another novel out of nothing but my mind which is pretty cool when you think about it. Walking on Moonlight is my 49th novel written (not published, written) which is not nearly as prolific as some, but still a respectable body of work.

As I near the end of a draft, my pace always picks up, my word counts rising from an average of 700 during the middle of the novel to 1200 a day. Yesterday in my frenzy to finish, I wrote 3388 words.

Am I going to take today off? Um, no. While Walking on Moonlight will rest on my hard drive for a few months so that I can revise with fresh eyes, I will be moving my Project B into my Project A slot and continuing with that. A change is as good as a break for me. However tonight we will order out so I don't have to cook and I will read the ebook I bought myself as a treat yesterday.

Accomplishments should always be celebrated.

 

 

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.

The Darwinian Method

 

My writing method is a bit odd. I write a first draft, then take a break from that book while I work on something else (these days two other projects, one drafting, one editing).

I have my reasons. The mental break allows me to read the story as a whole novel and to come at revisions with a fresh eye. I can see and tackle large problems better once I have a bit of perspective. I then usually go straight from the second draft onto the third and keep working until the book is (mostly) done.

However, I don’t stick to a strict schedule. I’m not currently under deadline, so I work on what I want to work on. There are a number of first draft files languishing in my folders that I’ve simply never gotten back to. Some I still intend to finish, others I’ve given up. (The number of my first drafts currently sits at seven. Four I have intentions to revise, three I suspect I may give up on. Only one am I actually eager to fit into my schedule and revise.)

These unfinished novels used to make me wince and feel guilty, but lately I’ve decided to embrace it. This is just Darwin’s method of selecting the fittest and best. Some novel ideas just never quite pan out. Some first drafts aren’t worth the effort it would take to pull them up to par. If the idea of revising them makes me tired, I can just… let them go. That can be very freeing.

After all, if I ever do want to revisit an idea, the file is still there.

Because sometimes a writer has an idea that they don’t have the chops to pull off early in their career. Or sometimes a failed draft is just waiting for another spark to take fire. Waiting patiently for an epiphany.

I wrote the first draft of my YA novel Frost the summer after I graduated high school. The initial idea grabbed me and I started writing without much of an outline. The resulting draft was terrible, and I had no idea how to fix it. It languished in a file drawer for I think a decade before I revised it. I was pleased with it but my beta reader pointed out a significant problem that I didn’t know how to fix so I put it away again and worked on other books until a chance conversation made me realize I needed to change the setting and add another POV character. After that third draft the book was much better, and the fourth better yet—but I still couldn’t get it published. So it waited, patiently, for another few years, another epiphany. The changes I made for the fifth draft were relatively minor, taking only a week or two to complete, but oh, what a difference they made. The book sold, and then went on to win one award and be a finalist for a number of others.

Some seeds never sprout, some merely need time and care to mature and bear wonderful fruit.

 

 

Conventions, Epiphanies and a Sale!

 I just got back from When Words Collide, a fabulous writer/reader convention in Calgary, where I was a Special Guest. (Because this was the Final Chapter under current management they had not only a slate of Guests of Honor but a second slate of Special Guests, including some like me who would have been Guests of Honor during the Covid years.) I had a lovely time. I gave two readings, taught two workshops, participated in two panels and signed autographs. I met lots of writers, both published and unpublished, at all stages of their writing journey.

The highlight for me was getting to meet and talk to Tanya Huff, whose books I have been a fan of for years. She is funny, wise and an entertaining speaker. I bought her new fantasy book Into the Broken Lands and am halfway through rereading it already.  It's terrific! Buy it. Seriously.

I also had an Aha! moment about one of my own projects. Ironically, it came about because of the workshop I was teaching. I told the participants that during revision it was important to look critically at every scene to see if it advanced plot and character or if it could be cut. "Sometimes," I said, "when we're writing the first draft, we write the next thing that the character does, instead of the next thing that is relevant to the book's plot." I even had a little example that I showed.

Hours later, in my hotel room, it hit me that I had done this EXACT THING in one of my works in progress. The novel has gone through five rounds of revision and every time when I hit this scene I thought, "There's something wrong here," and I added more action, more dialogue in an attempt to make it work INSTEAD OF JUST CUTTING THE DARN THING. This particular novel is currently running about 25 k too long, so now I'm going to be looking to see if there are other chapters I can cut as well. I'm betting there will be.

So that's what I'm working on this week. I hope everyone else who was at the convention is feeling similarly energized and ready to dive into writing!

Oh, and before I go... My publisher, Great Plains, has done a 25% price drop on the the ebook version of my teen werewolf novel, Feral.  If you like Girl Alphas, try it!

17-year-old Chloe fears she's a Dud, a child born to two werewolves who can't change into a wolf. If she's still a Dud by the time she reaches adulthood, she'll be exiled. In the meantime, she's at the bottom of the pack hierarchy and the other teens in her small town make her life miserable.

Then she encounters a feral werewolf with the opposite problem: he's trapped in wolf form. Chloe suspects the feral is her old classmate, Marcus, who everyone believes died along with the rest of his family in a mysterious plane crash. Chloe vows to help Marcus regain his human self because giving up on him would mean admitting possible failure for herself, too. But she must act quickly. Pack law mandates killing ferals.

Buy on Amazon   Kobo   

Two Projects at Once

Yes, I'm trying this again, with the usual haphazard  results. In the past I've tried doing Tues-Sun on one project and Mondays on another. It worked well for awhile--and then it stopped working. At all.

Right now I'm drafting a new SFR book in the morning, and revising the fourth draft of a different novella in the afternoon. Theoretically.

How is this actually working? Well, on Monday and Thursday mornings, I do a Zoom write-in with two members of my writers' group. During that ninety minutes, I can usually do a daily quota of 1000-1500 words. Thus, freeing myself up to spend the afternoon on edits. Except half the time I end up doomscrolling on Twitter or doing puzzles. Sigh. Still, I usually get a few small edits done.

On other days, when I don't have the write-in, I don't always get in my daily quota and frequently end up drafting in the afternoon and not getting around to edits. 

This week, I had an epiphany on Monday evening about how to improve the novella. In an excess of enthusiasm, I put the drafting entirely aside for yesterday and today to work on the novella (though I intend to return to it for Thursday's meeting--tomorrow for me, today for those of you reading this blog). Yesterday I planned out how to implement the changes I want to make. Today I started tackling them and was going strong. At which point I remembered I had a blog due tomorrow...

So, yeah. Lots of ups and downs, but overall I would say the Zoom write-in are helping with my productivity and allowing me the brainpower to work on two projects at once. What I really need is more writing peeps to Zoom with on the other weekday mornings or afternoons. Anyone interested?

Beginnings

 My current work-in-progress is a novella called Unscripted based on a short story I wrote some twenty years ago called Without a Cue. 

It has a cute, somewhat quirky premise: everybody in this fictional world is delivered a script each day that they then have to follow. Only, of course, something goes wrong and the main character has to go off script to their great dismay.

I'm just starting the third draft, which is when I focus in on the nitty-gritty sentence level and analyze each scene. The beginning scene is the most important one in any story as it has to introduce the character and world as well as hooking the reader. I  thought it might be interesting to show a little bit of my process so here's an annotated excerpt from the first page.

EXCERPT

Chapter One

Something about the bus driver snagged Chris’s attention as he boarded the city bus on Monday morning. It took his sleep-deprived brain a moment to realize what the oddity was: she lacked the silver R on her forehead that should have marked her as a Robot. 

[ANALYSIS: The first sentence is okay, but doesn't have as strong a hook as I  would like, only raising the minor question of What snagged his attention? It does a basic job to informing the reader who the main character is, what he's doing and when he's doing it. The second sentence is better, first raising the question of Why is Chris sleep-deprived? and then alerting the reader than this is a science fictional world in which Robots are regularly bus drivers as well as raising the question of why this bus driver isn't a Robot.]

The beige City Transit uniform and peaked cap identified her as the driver, but her hair burned a garish red and the curls brushed her shoulders. Robots had utilitarian, short haircuts. They kept silent and focused on their job, their stares vacant. This woman made eye contact and spoke to him.

“Good morning!”

She sounded so cheerful that Chris smiled back at her, though, of course, he didn’t reply.

[ANALYSIS: The second paragraph is mostly added detail, drawing a picture for the reader and explaining how the bus driver is different from a robot driver. The next two  sentences advance the plot slightly. I'm hoping the "of course he didn't reply" raises the question of why he didn't reply in the reader's mind. This is the first subtle hint to my big world-building hook that everyone is following a script. Not sure if it's too subtle, though.]

She winked. “I like you. Sit up front beside me.”

Chris blinked a little at the unexpected request, but his mind was too fuzzy to recognize the warning sign that something was wrong. Assuming that the driver must be part of a new Storyline that was starting, he collapsed onto the nearest blue vinyl seat, kitty-corner from the driver. His artist’s eye saw her as cartoon bird perched on her high seat.

[ANALYSIS: Nothing much has happened yet, but we get another big hint that something is wrong and Chris's commute to work is about to take an unexpected turn. The capitalization of Storyline is another hook to make the reader wonder about the world. Then I feed the reader a little more information about Chris: he is an artist. There's a fair amount of  information packed into the first six paragraphs, but it doesn't exactly start with a bang. Conclusion: it needs more work.]

And there you have it, a glimpse into a writer's mind during revision!

  

Born in NaNoWri

 By Maureen Bonatch 

 

It’s almost November so you know what that means? 

Ok, maybe you don’t if you’re thinking about turkeys, and fall turning to winter and the upcoming holiday season and not immediately thinking about NaNoWri like me! 

 November is National Novel Writing Month 

Otherwise known as NaNoWri. I might write all year, but the enthusiasm of everyone participating in NaNoWri in November gives me an extra push to get those words on the page. 

I’ve talked about NaNoWri a lot over the years—whether anyone cared to listen or not 

 You might say I'm a little obsessed with it. Here are a few of my favorite posts: 

•  Making a DIY standing treadmill desk 
•  Secrets to Winning NaNoWri 
•  For Your Loved Ones Dealing with the NaNoWri Obsessed 
•  How NaNoWri is like Being An Alien 
• The Month After NaNoWri Poem 

 There are many more, I’m sure. 

How Do I Know NaNoWri Works?

                   My daughter and I winning NaNoWri Last Year

I haven’t “won” NaNoWri every year I participated, but I enjoyed it regardless. Although I have “won” (aka: finished a 50k first draft) more years than not. 

For me, NaNoWri inspires me to get those words on the page and prioritize my writing. Many of my books were born in NaNoWri. 

A few NaNoWri book babies have been polished and published—I’ve listed those below. 

•  Hexes, Highballs & Hockey (2017) 
•  Not a Chance (2014) 
•  Grandma Must Die (2013) 

 And now… Magic, Mimosa’s & Mistletoe (2020) 

I thought I wouldn’t win NaNoWri in 2020 I was feeling kind of down with 2020 and the holidays weren’t looking the same with lockdowns and restrictions on visiting with family and friends. 

I had started one story and was struggling with it until I decided to revive my holiday spirit by writing about it.

Magic, Mimosa’s & Mistletoe flowed out of me like water and was such fun to write! I had to do ‘research’ by playing Christmas music and was ‘forced’ to watch holiday movies. It really helped bring back my holiday spirit. Since I write paranormal I made the story a fun mash up of the Halloween and Christmas holidays.

I’ll be introducing Magic, Mimosa’s & Mistletoe to the world on October 31st. 

Here’s a taste! 

 I don’t see dead people, but my dog does. 

Hi, I’m Marissa Hale. When my friend, Grace invites me to visit the Inn she inherited, I’m high-tailing it back to my home state of Pennsylvania. Like most things in life, there are strings attached to her inheritance—and these ones have twinkly lights. The Inn, and the town, are Christmas themed. No witch worth her broom would choose Christmas over Halloween, unless that witch’s bloodline is the magic mainline for keeping the yuletide spirit alive. 

Her aunt’s death was already suspicious, but then we stumble upon a dead body amongst the poinsettias that resembles one of Santa’s fabled elves. It sure seems like someone is trying to force Grace to sell Kringle Inn. I’m going to need all the help I can get to solve these crimes, and save Christmas, but when the only witnesses are a pig, and a ghost, I’m not sure that’s going to be enough… 

Get Into the Holly Jolly Spirit Early by Grabbing Your Copy Right Here

I have several more ‘winners’ from past years (2015, 2016, 2018) that will be polished and released to the world in 2022. 

 What About You? Do You NaNo?       

Maureen’s first novella was a paranormal romance published when blogs were a new-fangled thing. She’s since changed her focus to writing paranormal cozy mysteries as M.L. Bonatch and urban fantasy as Maureen Bonatch. 

While she’s not busy writing or doing nurse-things, she’s a mom to her twin daughters, bicycling in the beautiful woods of PA with her hubby, doing the bidding of a feisty Shih Tzu, and dancing as much as possible. She believes music can be paired with every mood, laughter is contagious, and that caffeine and wine are essential for survival. 

 Visit Maureen's Website Here