Life Cycle of a Novel: Pausing for Breath

There comes a pint in every rough draft, when you’re racing madly for the finish line, when you have to pause for breath. Or at least, I do! Actually, this usually happens three times — once at about 25k words, once at about 50k words, and once again just as I’m about to finish.

The reason? Something has changed from the outline. Something that maybe just seemed like a clever add-in at first but which grew to the point that I couldn’t just slip it in. I have to consider it from every angle, possibly do some new character sketches, and then go back to make spot changes so that the story more or less works.

I get upset when I have to pause for breath. Even now that I’ve done this more than half a dozen times and I know the pattern, I get upset with myself for not being able to rush ahead. But inevitably, after the pause, I realize I did the right thing.

This week I paused for breath. I wrote almost no new material, and in the end I changed only a few lines of what I had already written. But I feel more confident moving forward that I know who my characters are and what they need to do.

Writers sometimes get too caught up in word counts, and I am no exception. But creativity is not a process you can measure quantitatively. My progress for the week was not 0 words written. It was literally immeasurable.