I've been referring to the current draft of my novel as my "zeroeth" draft. Plot points and backstory evolved as I was writing, and for the most part I just kept marching forward as though the previous chapters had been written the way I would write them now. As a result of that, it's incoherent - if someone other than myself tried to read it from beginning to end, it would make no sense. And for that reason, I haven't felt comfortable calling it a first draft.
But it dawned on me yesterday that all of that is precisely what a first draft is. I don't have to demote it to zero just because it's not yet readable. It has holes that need to be filled; it has scenes that need to be dropped and others that need to be rewritten completely; it has continuity problems that need to be smoothed out. What is that if not a first draft?
And as of this afternoon, it's finished.
As ideas came to me, as everything about it evolved, I just kept plodding onward, and today I wrote the last words of the last scene of: The First Draft. It is nowhere near ready for human consumption, but it's complete. It's roughly 118,000 words; I'd say I need to cut about 40,000, add about 20,000, and completely rewrite the rest. It took about 28 months to get this far, and it will probably take as long to do all of that. But here I am!
(And now, back to this short story I've been trying to finish editing.... )
But it dawned on me yesterday that all of that is precisely what a first draft is. I don't have to demote it to zero just because it's not yet readable. It has holes that need to be filled; it has scenes that need to be dropped and others that need to be rewritten completely; it has continuity problems that need to be smoothed out. What is that if not a first draft?
And as of this afternoon, it's finished.
As ideas came to me, as everything about it evolved, I just kept plodding onward, and today I wrote the last words of the last scene of: The First Draft. It is nowhere near ready for human consumption, but it's complete. It's roughly 118,000 words; I'd say I need to cut about 40,000, add about 20,000, and completely rewrite the rest. It took about 28 months to get this far, and it will probably take as long to do all of that. But here I am!
(And now, back to this short story I've been trying to finish editing.... )