That strange creature, the first draft
Every time I start a new writing project, I am struck all over again by how different it is from revision. About 90% (give or take) of my writing is revision, so first drafting is rarer. Which is probably why I have this neverending capacity to be surprised by its weirdness.
When I'm revising, it's easier to slip in and out of the book's world. And I can read the same sentence fifty times in a row, tweaking it a bit each time. And I can revise on a very regular schedule: I can pick a number-of-pages- or number-of-scenes-per-day goal and stick to it fairly closely.
When I'm first-drafting, it takes me a long time to get into a writing session, and often a long time to come out of it. (Like my recent "one-hour" planned writing session that turned into more than four hours.) And I don't like to dwell on any one sentence or tweak it for too long; I feel a forward pressure, a momentum. Except for those moments when I stop dead in my tracks because I don't know what happens next.
First drafting takes a lot of mental energy. I feel things bubbling away beneath the surface, and I wait impatiently for them to bubble up into the front of my brain where I can write them down. In the early stages, I may go a couple of days without adding words to the story, and part of me feels frustrated and as if I'm not advancing the work, but deep down I know the story is weaving together somewhere in my mind. I know I'm ready when scenes start popping into my head while I'm walking or making the bed: suddenly, characters are in there jabbering away, acting on their own.
I don't think I'll ever do NaNoWriMo because my first drafts don't like to come out in regular pieces every day. They like to come in bursts: 3000 new words one day, 20 new words the next, 2000 the next, then a day where I do nothing but delete a sentence that was blocking the way to the next scene, then 1000 words ... Like that.
Does your first-draft process differ from your revision process?
When I'm revising, it's easier to slip in and out of the book's world. And I can read the same sentence fifty times in a row, tweaking it a bit each time. And I can revise on a very regular schedule: I can pick a number-of-pages- or number-of-scenes-per-day goal and stick to it fairly closely.
When I'm first-drafting, it takes me a long time to get into a writing session, and often a long time to come out of it. (Like my recent "one-hour" planned writing session that turned into more than four hours.) And I don't like to dwell on any one sentence or tweak it for too long; I feel a forward pressure, a momentum. Except for those moments when I stop dead in my tracks because I don't know what happens next.
First drafting takes a lot of mental energy. I feel things bubbling away beneath the surface, and I wait impatiently for them to bubble up into the front of my brain where I can write them down. In the early stages, I may go a couple of days without adding words to the story, and part of me feels frustrated and as if I'm not advancing the work, but deep down I know the story is weaving together somewhere in my mind. I know I'm ready when scenes start popping into my head while I'm walking or making the bed: suddenly, characters are in there jabbering away, acting on their own.
I don't think I'll ever do NaNoWriMo because my first drafts don't like to come out in regular pieces every day. They like to come in bursts: 3000 new words one day, 20 new words the next, 2000 the next, then a day where I do nothing but delete a sentence that was blocking the way to the next scene, then 1000 words ... Like that.
Does your first-draft process differ from your revision process?
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