I Made It, but It Wasn’t What I Thought It Was

I did it.  I just sent off a draft of my novel to my friend Lisa–my first reader ever.  I made the July 1st deadline.

I didn’t exactly sprint across the finish line, but I didn’t trip and land on it either.  It’s more like I jogged across the line feeling pretty good, but coming in way short of my time goal. No personal best.

I had this idea that I would make all these revisions–big and small–and today turn over a draft that if not good was at least tight.  Like, I would at least be sure it made sense and that events lined up.   No one could poke any holes in my plot or question me on any scene I couldn’t defend.  It would be solid.

But that’s not the way it happened.  I started revisions not knowing how to revise.  I found my way a bit, but never sat for hours and hours pouring over one chapter.  I’m still not sure whether I had unreasonable expectations or I failed.  Probably something in between.  I had to reconcile the way I thought it would be with the person I am, the circumstances of my life, and the way I work.  I am not a detail person.  I’m never going to spend hours trying to find that one perfect word.  I’d really rather jump off a cliff.

I wanted this to be it, but when I actually dug into the revisions, I realized how much more there was (and still is) to do.  Still, I know this could go on forever and I could easily delude myself into thinking that if I just worked hard enough, it would one day be perfect.  But, I’ve never in my life done anything and thought, “yup, that’s perfect,” so I won’t hold out for that now.

In preparation for this post, I went back to the post I wrote last summer when I finished the first draft of my novel.  I was hoping to find inspiration there.  Instead I found only the words, “The End.”  I knew at the time that it wasn’t really the end, but, well, it sounded good.  I wrote that post on August 1, 2008.  Then I thought July 1, 2009, was really The End, but it wasn’t.  Now I think I’ve really got the end figured out: August 1, 2009–one year after completing the first draft.  The goal is to have a draft I might actually try to do something with, but that, more importantly, I will let people read.  It’s time to finish one project and move on to many more.  I could stay here forever, but I don’t want that.

This most recent race to the finish taught me a few more things about writing.  First, it’s like riding a bike.  I hadn’t written much fiction over the last year.  It occurred to me that I might not be able to do it anymore, however little sense that makes.  I found all kinds of reasons to hesitate and avoid getting started, but once I did get going, I found myself writing again without much effort at all.  I think a lot of what I wrote was actually better than what I’d written before.  Second, I find revising really hard and it will always be my habit to try to get things right the first time.  But when that’s not possible, I find that pulling out specific scenes and working on them in another document took off a lot of the pressure.  If it wasn’t good, then I could simply delete it without having ruined any of what I’d already written.  If I found a better way to tell the story, then I could simply cut out the old and substitute it for the new.  Third, I relearned the very obvious: the hardest part is getting my butt in the chair and my hands on the keyboard.  It’s so easy to avoid writing by, say, talking about what you’re doing like I have done here to a sometimes sickening degree, but there’s no way to complete a novel without just sitting down and writing it.

Related posts:

1. Things I Thought as a Kid
2. Race to Finish the Novel: Days #2 and #3
3. The Novel
4. It’s Been Six Months
5. No Perspective