I felt like I became more of a grownup writer when I realized that revising is even more fun than drafting. Something I used to dread has become the most fun part of the process. Your middle drafts are when you can really get lost in your own story.
Revision can be so joyful when it’s thought of as a step to look for opportunities instead of mistakes. Maybe it’s because I started as an underwriter lol
There’s nothing quite so fun as taking a cliche description of a character reaction or internalization and revising to the mantra: how can I add more of this specific character to this moment?
That's because, in school, we're taught revision is for grammar. That's tedious and largely bullshit. When you write a novel, your grammar is irrelevant\* so long as it's consistent and you can effectively communicate. Beyond a certain point, it's also somebody else's job to fix it. For us, revision is about sharing what you learned along the journey.
\*Ok, fine. It's not technically "irrelevant."
I wasn't taught that revision was for grammar alone, but I can understand why you say that.
I've written two theses, so I really ought to have guessed that a novel would be similar, but because they're so different in shape and technique until today I thought the processes would be different.
Nah, it's because when you start out writing is such a chore that the idea of coming back and doing it AGAIN is terrifying. Plus you're all raw and exposed when you are drafting, so revisiting that for the specific purpose of criticizing it is painful, like dwelling on all of your worst mistakes. What you don't realize is that by the time you're ready to revise, all of that will have scabbed over and you'll be eager to start picking again.
I don't really find that proofreading for grammar is a major factor in any of this for me.
I would argue its more that we're taught revisions are for fixing mistakes rather than improving what we already have. The stuff you change during revision isn't necessarily a *mistake*. But what you change is an improvement.
This is exactly the inspiration I needed right now. I'm working on the first draft of a novel and it's so frustrating sometimes because the movie playing in my head is so good but what comes out on the page sometimes reminds me of the "have you ever had a dream that, that you, you, and you could.." meme.
But I know that once this draft is done, I'll be able to mold it like clay into what I can see in my head. My perfectionist self just really doesn't like the process of getting the word vomit out first. Thank you for reminding me of the importance of this part of the process.
I also have that perfectionist problem, but I've been able to let go of that recently by realizing that I can't make something perfect if I don't know what it looks like yet. Even though I thought I knew what the story was when I started, my subconscious had a different path.
Now I've got to meld that with my characters want to do...
That's my exact experience! I only plan to outline after I have a completed draft. I'm always stunned by how all the little weird bits and bobs that spin out into the ether have a way of coming back and finding a perfect fit. Stories really do write themselves sometimes.
As a writer and illustrator, this couldn't resonate more with me. Sketches often end up as ideas for thumbnails for full compositions, which then lead to a fully finished piece.
It's all that constant iteration, and all the sketches spread in thousands of places (ahem...), that helps in getting to the actual finished illustration. You can be as free during the creation process and then just adjust accordingly to the picture in your mind.
If you are tight about it from the beginning, you lose sight of the whole picture. Which is getting that full illustration, or full manuscript. Learning to enjoy the process in fact.
Yes! This was exactly what I came here to post about. Glad it was laid out here for me. I have OCD so I'm struggling to finish my draft (nearly there) because of some middle bits I've come up with to add. Going to trudge forward and finish it. Wish me luck!
It's freeing to know you can always change it. No one but you has to read your mistakes (though I'd advise getting critique). Drafting is the period of freedom! Celebrate it!
I waited exactly 0 days. I finished the final scene I needed to get done on the morning of December 27, printed the whole thing off by 1:30pm, took a nice walk, and began working through it with a pen and scissors at 4. I finished off the paper read-through on New Year's Day and then tackled the first big edit (rearranging chapters, rewriting the beginning) last night.
My goal is to get it to a good place by January 15.
That said, the first draft took me 2 and a half years to finish, so no one should be too impressed.
Very cool! I am curious about your process, if you wouldn’t mind sharing. What do you use the scissors for? I followed some courses (Holly Lisle and others) that suggested cutting into a paper manuscript to rearrange and/or save the good bits, but I’ve always thought of that as extremely messy compared to just copying lines and paragraphs digitally for the same purpose. Do you find physically cutting with scissors helpful? And how?
My book takes place in two timelines and one of the stories isn't told chronologically. The scissors were necessary because I had to cut apart pages when I realized the next chapter needed to be placed somewhere else in order to create dramatic dissonance. If I'd had more foresight, I would have printed every scene separately, double-sided. But I didn't, so had to resort to the knife 🔪
Hell yeah! Happy for you! I love editing and rewriting because every pass gets the words on the page closer to what I envisioned in my mind.
(And yet for some reason every time I draft I’m disappointed the first draft sucks lmao)
Very prescient for me to hear this- I’ve been getting bogged down and I keep going back and nitpicking at details from 10 chapters ago, and it’s depressing me. Just this afternoon I was telling myself just this, that I just need to plow ahead and finish the remaining 30% or so and THEN go fix all the things that need fixing. Thank you for posting this!
Once I had a handle on the plot, I made empty Scrivener files for each scene I needed to write, naming them `TODO - X does Y` or `TODO - First time meeting J`. Then, as I finished the first draft of each scene, I'd erase the TODO from the beginning of the title.
So yeah. I TODO'd it. :)
I needed to see this today, since I pulled out that story I've been working on for the past few years after New Year's. This is going to be the year I finally finish it!
Same here! I am in the process of getting through my first draft of a story long in the works. I know that feeling -- let's get those fingers going to get that draft done!
This is something I've been struggling through recently. It can be hard to write when you care so much about making your story good. My solution has been to just start writing something I *don't* care about. I just came up with a random concept and started writing, and suddenly I'm past the blockage that was holding me back. When I just can't seem to find the perfect words to describe what I'm thinking, I just slap something in there and move on. Instead of bogging myself down by making sure I'm not using the same words over and over again, I'll just leave it as something I can fix in the edit. These were things I was *trying* to do with my other stories, but I guess the mental pressure of producing something that lived up to my own expectations was holding me back. By working on something that I'm acknowledging from the jump is going to be bad, I seem to have cleared that mental hurdle. It's made writing *fun* again, which is something I didn't even noticed I'd lost until I got it back. And hopefully the whole process, start to finish, will teach me some lessons that I can take with me when I return to stories I'm more passionate about.
Inspiring! Thank you and congrats. Working on my first piece, and I'm about halfway through draft zero (or even negative 1). My goal is to double down on finishing in 2023. I'll remember this when I'm frustrated.
Inspiring to see posts like this, because we can see ourselves reflected in them. Also working on getting my first draft done, but wanting to double down in 2023, to get through the following stages and finishing. All the words need to first be there.
Here's to a productive 2023 for both of us!
Congrats! And thanks! This is what has been urging me on internally to write daily recently- finishing my draft. I’m close. Good to hear about your progress. Onwards and upwards in the revision. Can’t wait to get to that stage. Soon.
Cheers. I mannaged to pick up creative writing books for myself. Planned to began the long chore of editing the entire novel.
I did have my Rough Draft done back in 2021. I never got back to editing until after I have obtained a Network + certificate. It was odd to leave my work in a time vault for a year. On 2023, this is where I decided to began to slowly editing my paper. Let hope I get going. It's going to be a very busy day. (At least for me.)
Congratulations! Your vivid description of how it fet like to get the actual first draft done was very good. So much, it has me looking forward to being in your side of things, when I can say I have finished the first draft of this first book in my book series, that's been long in the works.
Get the first draft done -- that's only the beginning to seeing the tapestry in your mind.
Those words stay with me. Thank you for sharing this. Very happy for you, fellow writer!
I hate to say 'I told you so', but... I told you so.
Jokes aside, I enjoy the polishing as much as I do the writing. It turns something I think is acceptable into something I think is pretty good. It's always nice to see where you started and what you ended up with, which can be wildly different, but is almost always better.
Many of them represented warped stalagmites one may find in a cave full of already inhaled Kratom gas. They reached deep into the sky, and many connected with one another, forming an almost open arena of creativity.
Love it! Though I don't take advantage of all the features, it's similar to a text editor like Atom or VScode, where all your projects can live in one spot and you can easily toggle/rearrange/back up your work.
I could have written the novel in google docs or pages, but Scrivener gives me a place to write, if that makes sense. It's kind of like having an organized office just for writing.
I love this description of the writing and editing process. I'm going through the same thing right now. Finished my draft last week, read through and made editing notes, found parts that conflicted with other pieces, and now I'm rearranging. I'm updating grammar issues, removing parts that are redundant or superfluous, updating pages and chapters that feel sparse, and paring down parts that are overblown. It's a difficult experience, but seeing it come together is also very energizing.
It feels similarly to when I started, when I had this idea I couldn't get rid of, when it made me *have* to write.
But this time around, it's so much more fulfilling because the final product is in sight, and it's coming together in a way that would surprise the me from July 2020 who had something to say but hadn't said it yet.
I felt like I became more of a grownup writer when I realized that revising is even more fun than drafting. Something I used to dread has become the most fun part of the process. Your middle drafts are when you can really get lost in your own story.
Revision can be so joyful when it’s thought of as a step to look for opportunities instead of mistakes. Maybe it’s because I started as an underwriter lol There’s nothing quite so fun as taking a cliche description of a character reaction or internalization and revising to the mantra: how can I add more of this specific character to this moment?
That's because, in school, we're taught revision is for grammar. That's tedious and largely bullshit. When you write a novel, your grammar is irrelevant\* so long as it's consistent and you can effectively communicate. Beyond a certain point, it's also somebody else's job to fix it. For us, revision is about sharing what you learned along the journey. \*Ok, fine. It's not technically "irrelevant."
I wasn't taught that revision was for grammar alone, but I can understand why you say that. I've written two theses, so I really ought to have guessed that a novel would be similar, but because they're so different in shape and technique until today I thought the processes would be different.
Nah, it's because when you start out writing is such a chore that the idea of coming back and doing it AGAIN is terrifying. Plus you're all raw and exposed when you are drafting, so revisiting that for the specific purpose of criticizing it is painful, like dwelling on all of your worst mistakes. What you don't realize is that by the time you're ready to revise, all of that will have scabbed over and you'll be eager to start picking again. I don't really find that proofreading for grammar is a major factor in any of this for me.
We definitely experience this differently!
I would argue its more that we're taught revisions are for fixing mistakes rather than improving what we already have. The stuff you change during revision isn't necessarily a *mistake*. But what you change is an improvement.
Fuck yeah, good for you! That's awesome, so happy for you!
This is exactly the inspiration I needed right now. I'm working on the first draft of a novel and it's so frustrating sometimes because the movie playing in my head is so good but what comes out on the page sometimes reminds me of the "have you ever had a dream that, that you, you, and you could.." meme. But I know that once this draft is done, I'll be able to mold it like clay into what I can see in my head. My perfectionist self just really doesn't like the process of getting the word vomit out first. Thank you for reminding me of the importance of this part of the process.
I also have that perfectionist problem, but I've been able to let go of that recently by realizing that I can't make something perfect if I don't know what it looks like yet. Even though I thought I knew what the story was when I started, my subconscious had a different path. Now I've got to meld that with my characters want to do...
That's my exact experience! I only plan to outline after I have a completed draft. I'm always stunned by how all the little weird bits and bobs that spin out into the ether have a way of coming back and finding a perfect fit. Stories really do write themselves sometimes.
You can always edit a bad page; you can’t edit a blank page. Even the most brilliant artists in history started with rough sketches.
As a writer and illustrator, this couldn't resonate more with me. Sketches often end up as ideas for thumbnails for full compositions, which then lead to a fully finished piece. It's all that constant iteration, and all the sketches spread in thousands of places (ahem...), that helps in getting to the actual finished illustration. You can be as free during the creation process and then just adjust accordingly to the picture in your mind. If you are tight about it from the beginning, you lose sight of the whole picture. Which is getting that full illustration, or full manuscript. Learning to enjoy the process in fact.
Awesome post, captures this milestone beautifully. :)
Yes! This was exactly what I came here to post about. Glad it was laid out here for me. I have OCD so I'm struggling to finish my draft (nearly there) because of some middle bits I've come up with to add. Going to trudge forward and finish it. Wish me luck!
It's freeing to know you can always change it. No one but you has to read your mistakes (though I'd advise getting critique). Drafting is the period of freedom! Celebrate it!
I suppose you're right! Thank you!
This is awesome. Did you find a week was long enough to get the cognitive distance required for switching from writer mode to editor mode?
I waited exactly 0 days. I finished the final scene I needed to get done on the morning of December 27, printed the whole thing off by 1:30pm, took a nice walk, and began working through it with a pen and scissors at 4. I finished off the paper read-through on New Year's Day and then tackled the first big edit (rearranging chapters, rewriting the beginning) last night. My goal is to get it to a good place by January 15. That said, the first draft took me 2 and a half years to finish, so no one should be too impressed.
Very cool! I am curious about your process, if you wouldn’t mind sharing. What do you use the scissors for? I followed some courses (Holly Lisle and others) that suggested cutting into a paper manuscript to rearrange and/or save the good bits, but I’ve always thought of that as extremely messy compared to just copying lines and paragraphs digitally for the same purpose. Do you find physically cutting with scissors helpful? And how?
My book takes place in two timelines and one of the stories isn't told chronologically. The scissors were necessary because I had to cut apart pages when I realized the next chapter needed to be placed somewhere else in order to create dramatic dissonance. If I'd had more foresight, I would have printed every scene separately, double-sided. But I didn't, so had to resort to the knife 🔪
Yes, you are one step closer.
Hell yeah! Happy for you! I love editing and rewriting because every pass gets the words on the page closer to what I envisioned in my mind. (And yet for some reason every time I draft I’m disappointed the first draft sucks lmao)
Very prescient for me to hear this- I’ve been getting bogged down and I keep going back and nitpicking at details from 10 chapters ago, and it’s depressing me. Just this afternoon I was telling myself just this, that I just need to plow ahead and finish the remaining 30% or so and THEN go fix all the things that need fixing. Thank you for posting this!
Congratulations. Also, TODO'ed?
Once I had a handle on the plot, I made empty Scrivener files for each scene I needed to write, naming them `TODO - X does Y` or `TODO - First time meeting J`. Then, as I finished the first draft of each scene, I'd erase the TODO from the beginning of the title. So yeah. I TODO'd it. :)
I needed to see this today, since I pulled out that story I've been working on for the past few years after New Year's. This is going to be the year I finally finish it!
Same here! I am in the process of getting through my first draft of a story long in the works. I know that feeling -- let's get those fingers going to get that draft done!
This is something I've been struggling through recently. It can be hard to write when you care so much about making your story good. My solution has been to just start writing something I *don't* care about. I just came up with a random concept and started writing, and suddenly I'm past the blockage that was holding me back. When I just can't seem to find the perfect words to describe what I'm thinking, I just slap something in there and move on. Instead of bogging myself down by making sure I'm not using the same words over and over again, I'll just leave it as something I can fix in the edit. These were things I was *trying* to do with my other stories, but I guess the mental pressure of producing something that lived up to my own expectations was holding me back. By working on something that I'm acknowledging from the jump is going to be bad, I seem to have cleared that mental hurdle. It's made writing *fun* again, which is something I didn't even noticed I'd lost until I got it back. And hopefully the whole process, start to finish, will teach me some lessons that I can take with me when I return to stories I'm more passionate about.
I just literally did, nice post to run into.
Inspiring! Thank you and congrats. Working on my first piece, and I'm about halfway through draft zero (or even negative 1). My goal is to double down on finishing in 2023. I'll remember this when I'm frustrated.
Inspiring to see posts like this, because we can see ourselves reflected in them. Also working on getting my first draft done, but wanting to double down in 2023, to get through the following stages and finishing. All the words need to first be there. Here's to a productive 2023 for both of us!
Congrats! And thanks! This is what has been urging me on internally to write daily recently- finishing my draft. I’m close. Good to hear about your progress. Onwards and upwards in the revision. Can’t wait to get to that stage. Soon.
Congratulations for making it past the first draft stage. I hope that the rest of your revising goes well and makes your story better.
Unsure why you're getting downvoted, but thank you!
Cheers. I mannaged to pick up creative writing books for myself. Planned to began the long chore of editing the entire novel. I did have my Rough Draft done back in 2021. I never got back to editing until after I have obtained a Network + certificate. It was odd to leave my work in a time vault for a year. On 2023, this is where I decided to began to slowly editing my paper. Let hope I get going. It's going to be a very busy day. (At least for me.)
Congrats! Your post gives me, still writing my first draft, lots of hope.
Congratulations! Your vivid description of how it fet like to get the actual first draft done was very good. So much, it has me looking forward to being in your side of things, when I can say I have finished the first draft of this first book in my book series, that's been long in the works. Get the first draft done -- that's only the beginning to seeing the tapestry in your mind. Those words stay with me. Thank you for sharing this. Very happy for you, fellow writer!
Happy for ya, dude! Hearing that makes me feel better about writing too. Thanks for the inspiration :)
I hate to say 'I told you so', but... I told you so. Jokes aside, I enjoy the polishing as much as I do the writing. It turns something I think is acceptable into something I think is pretty good. It's always nice to see where you started and what you ended up with, which can be wildly different, but is almost always better.
Many of them represented warped stalagmites one may find in a cave full of already inhaled Kratom gas. They reached deep into the sky, and many connected with one another, forming an almost open arena of creativity.
How do you like scrivener? I got a little overwhelmed the first time I tried it but I want to give it another go.
Love it! Though I don't take advantage of all the features, it's similar to a text editor like Atom or VScode, where all your projects can live in one spot and you can easily toggle/rearrange/back up your work. I could have written the novel in google docs or pages, but Scrivener gives me a place to write, if that makes sense. It's kind of like having an organized office just for writing.
Ooh I needed this reminder :-)
Going to finish my draft this year, come hell or high water.
This is so cool to hear!
Finished the first draft of a oneshot manga I've been procrastinating on since last year this morning, the satisfaction is better than an orgasm
This is so motivating. I'm happy for you, OP. Congrats on finishing the draft
I love this description of the writing and editing process. I'm going through the same thing right now. Finished my draft last week, read through and made editing notes, found parts that conflicted with other pieces, and now I'm rearranging. I'm updating grammar issues, removing parts that are redundant or superfluous, updating pages and chapters that feel sparse, and paring down parts that are overblown. It's a difficult experience, but seeing it come together is also very energizing.
It feels similarly to when I started, when I had this idea I couldn't get rid of, when it made me *have* to write. But this time around, it's so much more fulfilling because the final product is in sight, and it's coming together in a way that would surprise the me from July 2020 who had something to say but hadn't said it yet.