Another Karen Said
Surprise!
A moment ambushed today that I really wasn’t expecting. I finished writing, editing, and revising draft number ten of April Showers 1921.
I’d finished writing the novel, and it ‘felt’ correct, a coherent and complete tapestry of time, characters, settings, events, and story.
I was pretty damn astonished. Just like reading an entertaining book, writing a book that entertains me leaves me breathless and lost, wanting more while processing, it’s over. It’s good. It’s done.
Draft number ten is a hefty boy, let me tell you, six hundred ten pages in MS Word, one hundred eighty thousand plus words. It’d required eight months, my gosh, almost to the date I’d officially started it after a dream in early January. I’d first mentioned it in a January 27, 2019 post. Eight months of thinking about it, writing, revising, researching, editing, processing, and editing, revising, and re-writing again and again. It’s odd and startling to realize that I’ve written all those pages in that time, and doesn’t count all those pages that’ve been removed during the revising process. It was just such a short spurt of time, and just a few hours each day of typing.
Now, I’m contemplating, what do I do with myself? This is my writing time, but I’ve finished writing the novel. It’s like getting out of school early. Such possibilities! Should I go eat? Well, I’m not hungry; this is my writing time. Tell someone? Well, of course, I posted this, to share with my online friends. Many of you are writers and appreciate the satisfaction of writing and finishing. I think you, of all, will most understand, and have been quite supportive.
I suppose I’ll take a break today, and then return tomorrow, and start going through my notes to confirm that I’m not leaving something out there hanging. Then…well, we’ll see.
But, um, yeah, I guess I’m done writing like crazy for today.
Yeah.
Draft Ten
Here’s a casual writing update, since I was thinking about it.
I thought I was on draft number seven of my latest WIP, April Showers 1921. After yesterday’s writing session, though, I was going through old docs while closing down – browsing the past, if you will – when I realized, wow, this is actually the tenth draft, if you include three false starts.
As I walked yesterday, I looked back on the process of writing this novel. I’d say that the first five or six drafts were about exploring and gasping the concept, characters, and story. A sprawling story, grasping all of its elements and ramifications was difficult. It reminded me of attempting to tell about World War II. So much happened and impacted on other areas, but things needed to be sorted and put into some order that could be followed.
I’d been free-flowing, writing like crazy, with those early drafts, leaping into different aspects of the story, exploring and expanding scenes and anecdotes, hunting for the handle on the characters and relationships. From that came the sense of the story arc, the concept’s fullness, the characters’ complexities, and the beginning and ending.
Each draft was being organized around what had been previously written. The chapters would be cut and slashed, re-written and re-arranged as needed to fit my evolving understanding. Then more was written to expand scenes. Everything was shifted as required to address pacing and coherency.
With the next draft, number seven (or ten, as I see it now) which is the current draft, it finally felt that I was fully in tune with what’s going on. I’ve been rocketing through it. Most of the writing sessions are not long, but intense and explosive. Progress has been strong. As with most of my writing process, regardless of their purpose, my mind continues working on it no matter what I’m doing. It’s not unusual to have an epiphany in a grocery store or while driving the car. Most often, though, as I walk away from the writing day, the muses carry inertia forward, delivering more material for the next day.
It’s fun writing like this, learning the story, telling the story, and feeling it opening up, expanding to include more while contracting to deliver more impact.
Okay, got my coffee, and ass in chair. Time to write like crazy again, at least one more time.
Michael Seidel, writer 