Getting the first draft done

I write like I paint, in layers. First I apply a base layer, to experiment with shapes and colours, then another one on top of it, and another one, and another, until it is only a question of tweaking and refining details. There is no sign of the base layer in the finished painting, yet without it the painting would not have existed.

I see the first draft as a base layer of a painting. An unrewarding, difficult, discouraging stage. But probably the most important one in my writing process, which is made of a succession of drafts. The first draft is usually handwritten. The second draft happens when I type the first one on the computer: that also allows me to edit it as I cut/add/alter many passages, correct mistakes and make the plot more coherent. Once the manuscript is on my computer I edit, edit, edit, edit, edit… I do more historical research, check period details, work on the style and on the fluidity of my prose, hunt down as many spelling/grammar mistakes as I can, eliminate crutch words… I’d say there must have been about five drafts of As Winter Came and Went: I’m soon going to start working on what I hope will be the last one before publication, having received feedback from my first readers.

The first draft is the stage I like most and least at the same time. It is wonderful to be able to put my ideas to paper, to craft the world of my novel, to create my characters. But sometimes ideas run out and I face a blank page. Sometimes I realise that something in the plot doesn’t work and will have to be revised later on. Sometimes the writing is downright horrible and I don’t know how to make it better. 

I find first drafts hard to complete. I have a couple of novels in progress that probably won’t go past this stage. For without a finished first draft I have nothing to work with: it is the raw material of my writing process. When I was writing the first draft for As Winter… I made myself complete it. I forced myself to go on writing, even if it was mediocre, telling myself that I could change it later anyway. A first draft is just that. A first draft. A base layer that will be hidden beneath the finished work. What was important was getting it done. The trick is to understand that and to accept its imperfections.

Completing the first draft for As Winter… felt like a great achievement and as I wrote “THE END” (yes, I just had to write “the end,” because it is so satisfying) I was both proud and relieved and I knew that I would publish this novel one day, even if my work on it had only started: almost a year elapsed before I deemed the manuscript had been polished enough to be seen by other eyes than mine.

If someone was to read that first draft (assuming they could decipher my handwriting), it would make no sense to them. Or the first part would make some sort of sense, then suddenly they’d have the impression they’re reading a completely different novel. It took me years to write it and both the plot and the characters changed dramatically during that time. The novel I envisioned when I first started to write this draft has nothing to do with the one I have completed. Yet in this first draft are all the seeds from which As Winter… grew. Even if parts of it are so silly or so badly written that I am ashamed when I reread them, they were as necessary as the scenes which I barely reworked when I edited the novel.

I am now busy writing the first draft of the sequel of As Winter… (I’m about half-way through the first chapter) and I find it easier and more enjoyable, probably because I know my characters much better and because I have a good idea of where the story is going (that is to say, I know how it ends and roughly what happens in-between). I hope it might be finished in a year or so, though I wouldn’t bet on it since I still have to re-edit and publish As Winter… as well as completing my Master degree in history. Writing is only a hobby for me: that’s the trouble when you’re a would-be novelist!