April’s Rough Draft Challenge Final Check-in
I’m not going to ask you if you hit your April Rough Draft November goals because it doesn’t matter. Rough Draft April, like all the other Rough Draft months, has two goals–to spur your creativity and offer community to writers who struggle to get their words down. So if any of that happened for you this month, you’re a success. And if it didn’t, and you’re still thinking about your story, you’re also a success. Because all of that internal and external work is necessary to tell a great story. As a professional writer, I know how hard the fight is to get new words on the page. So there will never be any judgment from me.
But Rough Draft Challenges aren’t simply a month-long writing party. It’s a way to change the mindset, for the better, of writers who fight resistance (between the devil and the frog), including all writers who write for a living and those who write as a hobby. It also helps those who scratch words in the dark to keep themselves sane.
What I love about this event is the preparatory work that helps me focus on a new story or a story I’m currently working on. I also love the camaraderie in sprint groups on Facebook and Discord servers. I have hit my goals in the past and there have been some years that I’ve been editing a book and I cut thousands of words. Yet the total word count doesn’t matter. The most important thing this event does is validate the act of writing itself. Rough Draft Months remind us that writers can change how people think about the world around them. It reminds us that writers can change the world. But there’s a caveat–Rough Draft Months remind us that writers can only do those things if they actually write the words.
As for my check-in, I wrote a 45,000 word novella, thirty blog posts, and added words to my WIP, my next Deadly Force novel A Promise at Midnight. And I also worked on a super-secret proposal for my agent that I’m very excited about. I also worried about the fact I’m still on submission for another book and haven’t heard anything yet. While I have no idea how many words I changed, cut, edited this month, I moved forward. To me, that’s more important than word count. For the month of April, I reminded myself that my words count and the stories in my head will one day sit in the hands of readers. For the month of April, I reminded myself that writing is what I’m meant to do with my life. For the month of April, I reminded myself that, despite the difficulty in getting words down, I am not alone.
April’s Rough Draft Challenge ends today, but the act of writing down words continues because our words matter. Our words can affect lives. Our words can change the world.
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