John Loeffler's picture
John Loeffler from Brooklyn, NY is reading Gallatian Canyon by Tom McGuane December 30, 2012 - 10:07pm

Sorry, it seems that whoever I tell, whether family or friends, they just look at me like I told them I just bought a new TV or something.

But, somehow, I have finished the first draft of a novel, coming in at 71.9k words. Don't know how I did it, I've forgotten most of it in the haze of exhaustion that all that writing produced, but the other day I wrote the last line and said, "Holy shit. It's done..." before collapsing happy and laughing at the keyboard.

I don't know any other writers in real life, so I figured I'd at least throw it out there for other writers who know just how god damned difficult these two months have been for me. I'm emotionally and intellectually exhausted but I'm exhilirated and now I have no idea what the hell to do. It feels like climbing a mountain only to find more rock when you thought you hit the peak.

I'm giving the book about six weeks to fade a bit before I go through with the first editing pass and I was wondering if anyone has any advice going forward? I've only done short stories so far and I'm wondering if this will be the same, only longer. Any thoughts?

 

Covewriter's picture
Covewriter from Nashville, Tennessee is reading & Sons December 30, 2012 - 11:21pm

Congratulations! I have no advice since I haven't finsished a novel, but I know you deserve a big congratulations. That's a huge accomplishment.

JEFFREY GRANT BARR's picture
JEFFREY GRANT BARR from Central OR is reading Nothing but fucking Shakespeare, for the rest of my life December 31, 2012 - 1:33am

Don't leave it too long; write a short story then get back to the novel. Write down any ideas you have in the meantime, and make sure you have paper/pen/whatever beside your bed for those just falling asleep thunderbolts. Congratulations!

Matt Attack's picture
Matt Attack from Richmond, Va. is reading As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner December 31, 2012 - 4:39am

Grats!

fport's picture
fport from Canada is reading The World Until Yesterday - Jared Diamond December 31, 2012 - 5:45am

Well done.  Well done.

Polite applause.

Watches with interest the journey.

Stephen_Inf's picture
Stephen_Inf from Illinois is reading Whiskey Tango Foxtrot December 31, 2012 - 6:55am

Congratulations!  Always a great feeling to put "The  End" on something you've been working on for so long.

I finished my fifth novel first draft about a month ago (they were all nanowrimo babies) and now after letting it marinate for a while I'll be starting on a second draft tomorrow morning.  Seeing as the first four novels were nowhere near worthy of a second draft, I can assure you I have no clue what I'm doing, but if I have any notes or stories from the road, I'll be sure and pass them along.

I'm walking in armed with the notes I made after I finished (before re-reading), the line-by-line I've worked on for the last week or so, and an outline of the structure now that I've rearranged the story to my liking.  I don't know if this means I'm adequately prepared or not, but I guess I'll know tomorrow when I've got that blank page in front of me.

Anywho, congratulations again, and good luck with the next steps.

bryanhowie's picture
bryanhowie from FW, ID is reading East of Eden. Steinbeck is FUCKING AMAZING. December 31, 2012 - 7:20am

Congrats.  For the next few days, you'll have ideas pop into your head for the rewrite, so keep a notebook handy.  Don't worry about rewriting it for a week at least, but keep a notebook by your side.  Little lines of dialogue and plot points you forgot about are going to emerge.

Don't think "I'll remember this idea when I get back to that part of the story."  You won't.  I promise.  Take notes.

When you read the draft, use that same notebook and take notes like you're in a college class.  Find the parts that make you groan.  Just mark them, don't rewrite them yet.  Keep it light, like you're reading someone else's work.  

And above all, even though it's your work, Don't take it personally.  A novel is its own creature, and the failures and successes of that first draft are a challenge, not a condemnation.

Dino Parenti's picture
Dino Parenti from Los Angeles is reading Everything He Gets His Hands On December 31, 2012 - 7:43am

Congrats, John! I had that feeling last year, and hope to have it again in '13. Good luck with your rewrite!

Frank Chapel's picture
Frank Chapel from California is reading Thomas Ligotti's works January 1, 2013 - 12:08pm

I w00t for you.

John Loeffler's picture
John Loeffler from Brooklyn, NY is reading Gallatian Canyon by Tom McGuane January 1, 2013 - 12:56pm

Thanks guys, I wish I had known better when I wrote this thing, because I didn't make nearly enough notes of things I knew THEN that needed to be changed.  With the exception of one or two major plot points that I had to change on the fly and some generally weak scenes, I only hope that I remember this mess when I go through it in the first round of edits. 

Also, after posting initially, I found a craft essay here called "The First Draft," by Max Berry that had some really great advice, so if anyone else has finished their first drafts coming out of NaNo, you should definitely check it out.

Courtney's picture
Courtney from the Midwest is reading Monkey: A Journey to the West and a thousand college textbooks January 1, 2013 - 1:41pm

Do you use Scrivener? Use Scrivener.

But if you don't, here's why I like it, and how you can use MS Word or something else the same way:
When I revise long work, I can't just do edits by reading my previous manuscript; I have to re-type it out completely. I suggest that to everyone, honestly, because otherwise you lose the integrity of your edits and probably won't get anything to work the way you wanted it to.
So, Scrivener: it fucking rules, because you can open two panes and have one up top with the previous manuscript and one down below that's either blank or your edits, and you can start writing. It's so easy, takes no trouble. Sure, it's not necessary to have Scrivener to do this: open MS Word twice, scale them to half the screen, position them on top of each other -- but with Scrivener, you can make those "encompassing" edit notes (like add more of a motif here, or check consistency of a thought-line in another scene there) in a little pane that you get by clicking the "Info" button. To do something similar with Word, you'd have to open yet another pane, re-size the original two to 2/3 of the screen size, and make the new document a running to-do list, but you can't organize it by scene unless you want a shit ton of word documents clogging up your computer.

Stephen_Inf's picture
Stephen_Inf from Illinois is reading Whiskey Tango Foxtrot January 1, 2013 - 4:16pm

Also, after posting initially, I found a craft essay here called "The First Draft," by Max Berry that had some really great advice, so if anyone else has finished their first drafts coming out of NaNo, you should definitely check it out.

Good read, thanks for pointing it out. I've read a lot of the craft essays but that's one I hadn't seen.  I'm hesitant to subject my first draft to public opinion just because I already know it needs so much work, but as I work on this next draft (1b) I think some of it's headed to the workshop.

fport's picture
fport from Canada is reading The World Until Yesterday - Jared Diamond January 1, 2013 - 4:40pm

@steven_inf

Bah, I've got a piece on its third run through and I am still explaining things I didn't make clear in the first place. Barry also said a few things about that and editing in the first place:

Sometimes what's wrong with a story leaps out as soon as I start getting feedback. It's so obvious! Only a moron, or an author who's spent the last two of years buried so deeply in his story that he can no longer see the way out, could miss it!

And then he emphasizes quantity. There are things you can have here. If you don't want to risk your 'baby' with us then pick somebody from the mix that has either been edited out or is a minor character and tell their story. Your style will still be there as will the weaknesses and strengths and the world the story is in.

Stephen_Inf's picture
Stephen_Inf from Illinois is reading Whiskey Tango Foxtrot January 1, 2013 - 5:18pm

Oh my baby will be making an appearance in the near future for sure. I just figure it doesn't make sense to waste anyone's time with my crappy first draft when I can waste their time with my slightly less crappy second draft. It's more fun to vandalize a house that just got a fresh coat of paint, isn't it?

John Loeffler's picture
John Loeffler from Brooklyn, NY is reading Gallatian Canyon by Tom McGuane January 4, 2013 - 7:59pm

@Courtney, I do use Scrivener, though I haven't even scratched the surface of what it can do. Can you elaborate on the panes fuction? I made the horrible mistake of not taking notes while writing and I would love the idea of having it side by side with my document.

@Stephen_inf, My first draft is a hot mess. I changed character motivations, backstories, and even invented a new antagonist a third of the way through and didn't go back and change anything yet. If I gave the first draft to somebody right now, I would cry while I tried to explain to them why the book made no sense. I'm waiting to the second draft before ANYONE sees it. That way, at least I corrected those first mangled 25k words.

@fport, I'm planning on three to four drafts max. The second one should fix the plot, while the third will take feedback into account. The fourth should be for final copy editing and things like that. I'm trying to break myself of the overediting habit. I have a stack of short stories I never submitted for publication because they "needed" another pass. I don't want to do that with this book. I've realized that by the third or fourth pass, there's not really much more fixing you can do, at least in my experience. Berry talked about how he liked making every draft a better book than when he started, but I just feel like I rewrite entire sections of the story which then need to be edited themselves. I don't know how Berry did it but more power to him.

I'm gonna start editing on February 2nd, which is exactly six weeks since I typed "the end." I figure that should give me enough time to come at the book as close to a newb as possible. That's what other writers I've read have recommended anyway. I appreciate everybody's congratulations and advice. It's sorely needed. You'd be amazed. In a city of 12 million people, I've met very few fellow writers here in NYC.

Stephen_Inf's picture
Stephen_Inf from Illinois is reading Whiskey Tango Foxtrot January 4, 2013 - 8:27pm

My first draft is a hot mess

Likewise. I started my second draft on Tuesday (after about 5 weeks off), and I'm writing starting at the end and working my way to the beginning. I know that I started to figure things out plot-wise somewhere in the middle of my first draft, so I figured starting the re-write at the end would help me fill in the gaps at the beginning. I have no clue if that was a good idea or not. It also means I'm saving all of the hard work for last, which could be bad. We shall see I guess.

Good luck with the editing

John Loeffler's picture
John Loeffler from Brooklyn, NY is reading Gallatian Canyon by Tom McGuane January 6, 2013 - 12:49pm

Thanks. I never thought about editing from the end backwards, but that actually makes some sense, since I can cut out a lot of loose ends that way. I guess I'll figure out by February. Thanks for the help everybody.

Courtney's picture
Courtney from the Midwest is reading Monkey: A Journey to the West and a thousand college textbooks January 6, 2013 - 1:15pm

I'm just going to warn you: you just set a monster loose. I love Scrivener and use all its functions and can go on for days.

As for the panes: when you have a scene open, in the top right of its screen, there's a bunch of buttons that are boxes. One's a solid box and the other two are split in two by a center line. Click the one that's two boxes on top of each other.

When you do that, a super-short pane opens beneath the one you're in. The background behind the title of your scene will darken to show you which pane you're working in. When you first divide the screen, both panes are the same scene. If you have a revised version, or an LBLed version, or anything like that, open it in the bottom and rescale it so it's a bit taller for easy reading. You can read it and use it to keep the integrity of your edits intact. I learned that the best way to edit is to read your own work while "starting from scratch" -- basically, open the panes, have the scene in the bottom one, and a blank scene in the top pane. Type out the entire scene, editing as you go.

The other pane I mention is the information one, which is where I make my notes. It opens when you click the blue "I" button up top right. It has the notecard for your scene (which I always edit after a scene is done to reflect exactly what happens for easy finding later) and, beneath that, the "meta-data" which is whether it's first draft, second draft, and chapter, scene, or idea. You can edit all of those, which I love. The draft number appears as a watermark on your notecard when you view the notecards and the chapter, scene, or idea are denoted by color, which look like a little highlighter streak at the top of the card. You can edit those tags to say whatever you want -- I like using the draft numbers when I first write, and then, on the third or fourth revision, I use them to mark scenes that need to be read for certain things -- like show vs. tell, dialogue, action, grammar, all that. Again, it's just easy to find later.

Beneath that is a "document notes" pane, which is a fucking life-saver during revisions. When I finish a manuscript, I let it sit for a while, and don't come back for at least like a week. Then, I reread the entire manuscript and make notes in that pane -- do I need to enhance the motif here? Is the symbolism dry? Did I fuck up a character's hair color and need to check its consistency? Are there any gaping holes in logic? Could this scene use more or less? Do I have a projected wordcount that needs to be garnished or cut here? Things like that.

And if you have the info pane open when you just click on the manuscript, it's "Project Notes," with a completely blue background and no other panes within the pane. You can make overall notes -- like consistency of characters, integrity of voice, all of that -- there.

If you have to do research, or effectively portray something you don't know well, all that, you can save research under that tab in the left and open it in the second pane, too. I do that quite a lot -- if I find a study that really encapsulates everything that needed to be discussed in my narrative, I refer to it constantly to guarantee my accuracy, so the panes are fantastic there, too.

Um, I think I rambled enough.

John Loeffler's picture
John Loeffler from Brooklyn, NY is reading Gallatian Canyon by Tom McGuane January 6, 2013 - 1:43pm

Sweet Baby Jesus, thank you Courtney!

I didn't know that Scrivener could multi pane the way it does and this is going to make revisions so much fucking easier. I thought I was going to have to work off the paper printed manuscript, which is a miserable experience, time consuming experience. Its nice to know I can have the original text right there on the same screen as the new text.

And don't worry about raging monsters of useful information. Those are the better monsters of our nature. Thanks again for your help!

Courtney's picture
Courtney from the Midwest is reading Monkey: A Journey to the West and a thousand college textbooks January 6, 2013 - 1:47pm

You're welcome!! Scrivener is my favorite writing tool ever. It's an absolute godsend for revisions in particular, so let me know if you have any other questions.

Dwayne's picture
Dwayne from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updated January 7, 2013 - 12:29am

I think I'd rather stab my eyes out then use Scrivener again, but best of luck with it.

I think I'll be done with the last, good as I can get it edit of a memior here in the next several days. Very excited.

John if you use Word don't forget to learn the track changes and search functions. Most uses of that and just aren't needed.

leah_beth's picture
leah_beth from New Jersey - now in Charleston, SC is reading five different books at once. January 7, 2013 - 10:25am

Congratulations - it IS a huge accomplishment. Good plan to bask in the joy for a bit.

Have you read On Writing by Stephen King yet? If not, read it while you bask. He gives some of the most straightforward, practical advice for the "now what" phase of noveling.

My favorite piece? When you are ready to sit back down with it (I like to write something else in between, whether it's a few shorts, or another novel, although that sounds like I've written a lot more than I have), do the first read straight through. Definitely keep a notebook handy, but seriously - do a read without making any changes. That'll give you the best picture of the overall flow of the thing.

Then...tear it up! Beat it up! But know that, as the author, you will WIN.

Best of luck!

fport's picture
fport from Canada is reading The World Until Yesterday - Jared Diamond January 7, 2013 - 10:26am

The new law of the land is that scrivener must only be used.

(don't worry Dwayne, I have a nice cane here)

(oh, and you touch type already right?)

J. Ramsey Golden's picture
J. Ramsey Golden from Alaska is reading The Dain Curse. The Artful Edit. January 7, 2013 - 11:23pm

Congrats! I agree with those above who say write something small and come back to the novel fresh in a few weeks. In the meantime, take notes on things your characters show up to tell you. Or if one of them comes back absolutely hell bent on kicking down your door, listen and follow.

I love that you say its a hot mess. I just finished my 3rd draft of my second book (first "book" is still in hot mess form) but here's the basic road map I've hacked out for my drafts:

#1. Brain dump (aka hot mess). I keep going even though nothing matches and everything changes as I go.

#2. Chronology, narrative arc, and character consistency.

#3. Plot holes and fact checks.

#4. Fleshing out the thin spots. Also, line edits. Grammar/spelling/clunky sentences. (Athough I do this in some of the earlier edits too).

That's the best of my advice. Oh, and savor the elation. It comes so seldom. Congratulations again. And best of luck!

John Loeffler's picture
John Loeffler from Brooklyn, NY is reading Gallatian Canyon by Tom McGuane January 9, 2013 - 9:55pm

Thanks all, I'm sticking to shorts for right now. I don't want to start up anything too hefty until I get my first edits done. I don't want to be torn between the two major projects.

For a change of pace, for me anyway, I settled on writing two short stories in the interim: a noir, crime procedural with an erotic edge (This is a stretch for me, having never written in any of these genres) and the February contest entry, which will be a true, starship in space kind of sci-fi, not the gritty environmental apacolypse I just finished.

@J, My characters haven't shown up to tell me anything yet that I don't already know, but they are impatient. They want to be fixed like yesterday.

@leah, I have read On Writing, but I hadn't even though of turning back to that for advice. Thanks for reminding me about that. I love that book.

@dwayne, Congrats on almost bring the memoir to as good as you can get it. Good as you can get it is better than perfect, IMHO. And sorry you hate scrivener. I'm not hating on word, but I dig scrivener to shit. Gotta be honest.

 

Dwayne's picture
Dwayne from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updated January 10, 2013 - 11:18am

@John - I don't know if it is any good, but at least I learned a lot from writing it. Thanks.

I think it might be that I had trouble installing it, and I was half way to hating it before I had started.

fport's picture
fport from Canada is reading The World Until Yesterday - Jared Diamond January 10, 2013 - 11:02am

@Dwayne, don't feel bad. I always blame me first then I go and figure out the problem.

Dwayne's picture
Dwayne from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updated January 10, 2013 - 11:24am

Thanks man, I'm more the type to blame myself for how my day goes. Easier to fix that way.

OtisTheBulldog's picture
OtisTheBulldog from Somerville, MA is reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz January 10, 2013 - 12:00pm

Congrats, John.

I started a novel in Nov, got about 25,000 words written. I have a good idea where it's going to go but then I focused on other projects. I kind of felt like a chicken with it's head cut off considering it's my first novel. I took a step back to slow down the writing, take some times with scenes, do a little more research, a little more thinking.

Tonight is my first class (a 12 person workshop led by a novelist & blogger for the Huff Post) called "Novel in Progress". It's 3 hours every Thursday for the next 10 Thursdays. A little pricey, but a good investment in myself.

I'll be sure to share some tidbits as they come along.

Brandon Byes's picture
Brandon Byes from Kansas City, Mo is reading The Girl Next Door January 10, 2013 - 12:01pm

Congrats!

swordfighter's picture
swordfighter January 10, 2013 - 1:35pm

hi all hope you all had a great Christmas and new years !

Congrats 

I let my first draft set 3 mouths my second draft does not look much Locke my fist first draft more of an outline 86,000 + words I'm deleted some scenes add others

I believe that dialog is so important i will only work on it second revision third I'll work on narration fourth I'll work on POV and grammar then get it professionally edited. thats my plan so far.

keep at it..