Sara Bates — Writing My First Draft

Is it normal to envy another’s process?

Hi.

This is my first post on Medium. Other than too-long Instagram captions, half-hearted greeting card inscriptions, and apologetic emails to my kids’ teachers necessitated by my inability to read the snack calendar, the only words I’ve written in the past year (November 2018–2019) have been the first draft of my young adult contemporary novel.

I want to set something straight from the very beginning.

I don’t have an agent.

I don’t have a book deal.

I don’t have advice.

I don’t even have a completed first draft.

I just have a lot of feelings.

I recently completed a book coaching package with Author Accelerator as part of an agonizingly slow crawl toward The End of the first draft of my young adult contemporary novel. From February through July 2019, I wrote 53,635 words or 157 pages, double spaced in Times New Roman 12 pt. font. I made it through, for lack of a better description, Act One of my novel.

I thought working with a book coach was going to be the golden ticket, the panacea, the holy grail, the answer to all my prayers. It was supposed to get me to The End.

But it didn’t.

What it did get me, however, is a solid skeleton outline of the story, a deep understanding of my characters, and the confidence to write forward knowing my fiction-writing skills have improved tenfold. It also got me a first draft of a big chunk of my book that probably looks more like a fourth or fifth draft. And, best of all, it got me a writing habit.

Despite all my progress, I still get discouraged, overwhelmed and, worst of all, envious of other writers. Not when they get an agent or a publisher or their debut novel is released. I don’t have a right to be envious of those things. I’m not there. Yet. So instead I feel envious of something even more irrational and even further out of my, or anyone’s, control: their process.

The other day I went on Instagram and one of my writer friends, B.K. Clark, posted a picture of her computer screen that read: THE FREAKING END!! B.K. finished the first draft of her romantic suspense novel. She wrote the words I’ve been aching to write for over a year. This wasn’t the first time a THE END post made me want to delete my Instagram account and hide under a rock. THE END posts always get to me.

In her post, B.K. noted her first draft was 56,656 words. Only about 3,000 words more than the FIRST ACT of the draft I’ve been working on for a year. The first draft of a novel that, if I actually want to get it published one day, probably won’t be any more than 75,000 words. When I asked B.K. about her draft, she told me she leaves a lot of space and blanks and room to expand during rewrites.

I found myself envious of B.K.’s process and her ability to write such a first draft. I found myself wishing I was a different type of drafter. The kind that can let ‘er rip and leave a slew of TKs and open questions in her wake and go back to the beginning with the confidence that comes with knowing there’s actually a whole story to revise.

I want that confidence. I want that knowledge. I want to get to the end.

Until then, I must accept that I’m a long, slow, over-drafter. I linger. I think too much. I rewrite sentences four and five times, only to delete them the next day. Or the next minute. All I can do is be proud of what I’ve written, proud of the skills I’ve developed and proud of the writing habit I’ve cultivated.

And when I finally finish my first draft, I already know writing The End isn’t going to be good enough.

I have way too many feelings.

I’m going to write the same thing Steven Pressfield wrote when he finally finished the draft of his first novel after years and years and years:

Rest in peace, motherf*cker.