The Diary of a Debut Novelist
Welcome to my Diary of a Debut, documenting the ins and outs of my journey on the road to publication. This week: actually writing.
It was an exciting day when I found out my book was finally - finally - going to get published. But before that, I had to actually write the thing.
This is the hard part. But if you’re doing it right, this is also the fun part. Everyone’s writing process is unique, and what worked for me won’t necessarily work for you. And I’m in no position to tell you what your writing process should look like anyway, because my first one was terrible.
What I got wrong
Mistake number 1: I hand wrote my first book.
If this works for you, then by all means do it. The trouble I had was that, by the time I’d finished, I had three notebooks and several scraps of loose paper with no easy way to search for phrases, copy and paste, leave comments to myself, or even check my wordcount. If I’d typed it up in the first place, I’d’ve saved myself a task.
Mistake number 2: I was too slow.
It took me two years to write my first draft. I’m on draft ten now, eleven years later. They say interrupted time is the biggest barrier to writing flow, and it certainly got in the way for me. I was scribbling in my notebook on my lunch breaks, writing on evenings and weekends, but I got distracted easily, and probably spent more time scrolling through Twitter and dreaming about awards than actually writing. For most of us, distractions can be unavoidable: family, kids, work, life. Author Zadie Smith’s tip? “Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.”
Mistake number 3: I waited too long to get feedback.
This is another reason why I’m on draft ten eleven years later. It makes sense, though - sharing your work is hard! I’d done several drafts by the time I got up the courage to send my book to readers, who told me that the sentence I’d spent four drafts perfecting needed to go - along with the whole scene. Feedback is what makes a book better, and if I’d sought it out earlier, I could have probably spent less than eleven years on this.
But with that being said, all these mistakes were learnings, and they helped me develop my new writing process, which is…
First draft
Also known as “vomiting on the page.” This is just me telling myself the story. I don’t edit as I go. Editing is banned. I think one of the most important things I’m doing in the first draft is letting myself be bad, a lesson I learned from John Green - if I get hung up on perfecting the first sentence, I’ll get caught in a spiral of “omg can I even write” and won’t get much further. I try to write the book in order, but if I’m stuck I’ll jump to the scenes I’m most excited about first and come back later.
Are you a pantser or a planner? I’m somewhere in between (the infamous “plantser”), so I’ll bullet point as much of the plot as I can think of, and then get started. As I write I’ll think of more plot and add bullet points, like an ancient map being revealed piece by piece by an old wizard, in no kind of order or logical pattern (thanks Galdalf).
When I was fortunate enough to interview Nicola Garrard about her debut novel 29 Locks, I was inspired by her process of a lightning-fast six week draft of about 60,000 words - that’s 10,000 words a week, or 2,000 words a day if you’re having a weekend. This is not what I did for my first book. It is what I did for my second book, though, and I got 70,000 words down in eight weeks. Not necessarily good ones, but that’s what editing is for. (By the way, Nicola has her own blog about her journey to publication here.)
Breaktime
Plenty of writers will tell you that you need a break between drafts. When I’ve been on a roll and keen to keep going, I found out the hard way you cannot see the wood from the trees if you do back-to-back drafts. So instead, I try to read books that are a similar genre to mine and learn from other writers.
Second draft
Woohoo! I have my page full of vomit, time to knock it into some semblance of shape. At this point I usually start at the beginning and read the whole story, changing as I see fit. I don’t worry too much about line level editing at this stage - if I want to fix something I will, but I won’t go through the book with a fine tooth comb just yet. These sentences may well all disappear if I decide to change an important plot point or remove a character, so no point perfecting each comma.
By the end of the second draft I should have no more missing paragraphs, no more notes to myself saying “MAKE THIS BIT BETTER” - I should be able to read it from start to finish.
Break - feedback!
At this point I chuck the book at my writing partner’s head and leave it to him. Again, I don’t ask for too much detail on the feedback, I just want to know how the plot is working? How’re the character arcs looking? Do scenes need to be added, removed, or replaced? We don’t want to zoom in too much just yet as we don’t know what scenes are going to make it to the next draft.
He makes notes and we have a loooong chat - then I list off everything I want to change in the next draft.
Third Draft
Now looking at my notes of things I want to change, I’ll start with the easy stuff - the one-sentence fixes. So yeah, jump to page 95 and change what kind of headphones she has. Then when I’ve exhausted those, I’ll do the medium stuff: one-paragraph and two-paragraph fixes. I’ll work through them until I’m at the one-page fixes, and only when I’m left with the big stuff, the whole-book fixes, do I go back to the start. At this stage I may read the whole thing out loud if that helps me concentrate - this is good to break up long sentences, catch repetition, and correct anything that sounds a bit weird. However I may have to repeat that stage if a lot of my sentences end up changing in the next draft.
I’ll ask one or two close friends to read it, and then another redraft. After that it’s time for…
I usually do 3 rounds of beta readers - 5 readers, then 10, then 5. I give them the book in either 4 chunks or 10 chunks and have a long call with each of them where they’re done with a chunk. I ask them how they found every single scene and every single character, while typing up their answers (this document usually ends up longer than the book). My readers are a mix of both friends and strangers I meet on beta swapping groups, who are able to be more objective than people who know me.
When all my betas have finished the book, I go through the notes and see what feedback is being repeated. If two or three readers have given consistent feedback, I know I should really listen to it. Feedback is my friend and it’s only going to improve my writing, which is exactly what I want.
I’ll redraft between each beta round, and when the changes emerging from my readers are getting smaller and smaller, that’s when I know my book is getting closer and closer to being in the right shape. After that, well - it’s time to query.
The Diary of a Debut is written by Jenna Adams whose debut novel will be published in 2022 by Neem Tree Press. You can follow Jenna at @jennaadamsbooks and Neem Tree Press at @neemtreepress.