Between my dissertation, my freelancing life, my early blogging years, this Substack, and the nine (!) unfinished novel drafts littering my Google docs, I’ve surely written millions of words.
But two have eluded me: The End
Wait.
That actually needs to be past tense now.
Two had eluded me… until last Sunday when, at 1:14am, sitting in my pajamas on the porch, I finished the first draft of my current novel.
While I’m not generally a crier, I half expected myself to cry when I finally, FINALLY, finished a full draft of a work of fiction. I wasn’t sure if I’d cry from joy or relief, but tears seemed probable. But they never came. Instead, I made sure to save the draft in two places and went to bed, mostly just grateful to go to sleep without having my characters still moving the furniture in my mind.
(I’m a night owl writer and most of this draft was written between 11pm and 2am, which often meant that I went to bed still thinking about Juliet and Truman)(Juliet is my main character and she would NOT APPROVE of my sleep hygiene lately)
I woke up on Monday and, while I love my job, found myself wishing I could take the day off just so I could go back to the residents of the fictional Henry Street and start cleaning up some of the messes I left in the first draft. It was comforting, knowing that for the months I’ve spent thinking about these characters, I’m not done with them yet and I’m no where near bored of figuring out how to build their world.
This is a good thing, because I’m going to be spending a lot more time with these people. Finishing the first draft is a big deal, for me, anyways (and hopefully the members of my writing group that have been cheering me on for the last few months and who, I hope, want to see how I finally land this plane). But if I want to ever even attempt to publish this story, I know that a first draft isn’t a book… not yet anyways.
There was a moment, about a week ago, when I knew that finishing this draft was inevitable. There was no longer a universe where I didn’t finish it. I had too much momentum and I already knew how the story was going to end. I knew the only thing barrier I had was butt-in-seat time to write.
One of the rules I set for myself while working on this draft was that I was absolutely not allowed to edit, revise, or even revisit sections once I finished writing them. I wrote shark style, constant forward motion only. I started a Google doc called “the parking lot” where I made notes about the things that I’d have to fix later or things my writing group suggested to make the story stronger. There are at least 35 things in the parking lot now. I know I have other problems too. There is a character whose age is a little all over the place. I’m pretty sure I gave one character’s ex-husband at least three different names in various stages of the draft. There is at least one character who has no physical descriptions until well into the second half of the story. Juliet is retired but from what kind of job? Is it HR? Would Juliet work in HR? Maybe.
I think only letting myself move forward helped me finish it and I know for sure having a writing group of hype women who kept telling me “more, more, more” made a huge difference. I’m a lifelong praise junkie, so I obviously loved getting weekly doses of people telling me which lines made them laugh and which plot points made them want to keep reading. Did I start grinning like a ding dong when someone in the group said that this was going to be a best seller someday? Yep. But, ironically, having this small group of people who told me that they believed in this book made it easier for me to let go of the idea of publishing it.
Now, look, I would LOVE to publish this book when I’ve done the work to clean it up. The idea of my book about a book club being read at book clubs? THE DREAM. But I’m also a realist. There are no guarantees when it comes to writing. Shitty books get published all the time and who knows how many great novels are languishing in desk drawers or slush piles. There are things I have going against me: I’m not some sexy literary ingenue. I don’t have thousands of social media followers1. I’ve never written a query letter or tried to find an agent. It might not happen for me.
I suspect the fear of failure (plus some previously undiagnosed ADHD) played at least some role in all of the abandoned drafts of the past. This time, I had a story that was easy to write - I’m not a woo woo person, so there will be no discussion of muses or portals here, but I will say every time I sat down to write, the characters were waiting for me. More importantly, I had an audience of five people who seemed to really want to know what Truman’s whole deal was and so I wrote for them and decided somewhere along the way that if only five people cared about my story, that would be enough.
So, I’m going to do the work of the next phase, even though there is no guarantee that I’ll ever see my name on the cover of a book. I want to do right by these characters. I want to see if the story works as well as I think it does. I want to make myself laugh a few more times writing snarky things for Eleanor to say.
“The End” is really just the beginning of the harder work of revising and editing and I’m trying to bring that same energy into this phase: no expectations and some joy in the process.
(I’m really proud of myself)
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Mazel Tov! This is really cool!
I'm so happy for you, Wendy! I can't wait to get a chance to read it :)