On Drafting Fast
I have one chapter + an epilogue left to write of the book I’ve been working on for the last… two and a half weeks.
Rewind. In mid July, I came up with an idea for the next book I wanted to write. Surprise, surprise, it’s a multi-POV YA fantasy heist with political/environmental themes and lots of queer romance.
They say authors should have a brand, right?
I’d written a short story in this universe already, and realised it could work as a much longer, more ambitious project. I started mulling it over, coming up with characters and a very, very rough plot outline.
Then the school I teach in for my day-job broke up for a six week summer holiday. I love this job and I honestly don’t see myself leaving it, but it does making writing hard. After work I’m far too tired to be creative, and weekends are usually reserved for my social life. I’ve been starting to write short stories during term time recently, since they’re less of a commitment than novels, and that’s been working. But I’ve long since realised that when I’m at work, I can’t expect myself to properly write.
There’s a feeling all authors get, seemingly no matter how many books we’ve completed, which is: what if I never complete another book? Having started and subsequently abandoned three different projects over the last few months, I was really starting to get the scaries.
But it turns out I just needed a holiday.
I wrote the first chapter of this new novel on the 20th July, the night before term ended, because I was so inspired by the idea that I had to get some words down. On the 21st of July, I finished work early, celebrated with colleagues, then came home to sleep. On the 22nd of July I continued where I left off. And I sort of… didn’t stop.
The words have been flowing. The characters have been bringing themselves to life. The plot has been coming to me in flashes of seemingly divine inspiration. I’m having lots of strange dreams, talking in my sleep. I’m not being very social. I forgot to shower for an embarrassing number days. Every time my flatmate comes home from work, she finds me in the exact same position on an armchair in our living room, laptop on my lap.
No, I don’t think this is healthy. No, I don’t recommend this approach. But I’m here with 75,000 words, written in 19 days. That’s an average of 3,900 words a day…
It’s turned into a book about knowledge and love, science and magic, duty and desire. The characters are adolescents, trying to work out their places in an unjust world—and trying to do the right thing, even when it’s hard.
It’s a rough first draft—it couldn’t be otherwise, at this pace. I’ll take a couple of days off working on it before returning to edits with fresh eyes. I want to add to the worldbuilding (sort of late Elizabethan London inspired, thank you SJ Parris). I want to make the character arcs compelling, the plot twisty. I want to make the voice as punchy as possible, like the YA fiction I love. When I’m finished, I reckon it will be about 90-95,000 words.
Then I’ll send it to beta-readers, and get feedback. Then more edits. Then to my agent, who by now has helped me edit three books, and is used to how I work.
But all that’s a while away. I still have the epilogue to write, and endings are the hardest part, don’t you think?