In the Fall I tried out the quick the messy first draft formula which prizes getting all of your thoughts down on paper as fast as possible (definitely completed in a week for a short story). I decided I’d write the back story of one of the characters in a novel I put down several years ago as a short story. 

The story idea evolved from thinking about the Fyre Festival fiasco. I was daydreaming about what if a bunch of rich people thought they were going to a festival on a remote island but on the island they were brainwashed and made to serve an evil heiress. Anyway, I didn’t want to write that but it made me think about the traits a character would need if he were to free all the people on that island. My main character’s story has nothing to do with any of that but he is from an island, so there’s that. 

After beginning the character’s backstory (i.e the short story) I started a writing class with Constance Adler with Bayou Writing Workshop. It was great, just a few people in her living room on Tuesday nights reading our work and discussing it. She led us in meditation before our free writes and it was remarkable how it opened up the psyche and freed up my thoughts. 

I had originally started this as a short story for a few reasons: 

1. I wanted to get to know this character better so that I could flush him out and know more for when I picked up the novel again.

2. I wanted to try out the quick first draft method and needed a short story to do that. (I’m a fan, but I’m not sure how to use it for a novel). 

3. I wanted to produce a finished short story relatively quickly and publish it through KDP so I could learn more about that process (because I learn by doing, period). (And I completely failed at that).

I submitted scenes to the class each week and it was well received, but by about week three Constance was sure this was a novel- not a short story. In February I was ~55,000 words in and I realized a few things: 

1. I don’t know how to write a short story. 

2. “Quick” first drafts don’t work for novels. 

Stephen King in his book On Writing said you should finish a first draft of a novel in 3 months max, and his first drafts were near 180,000 words!! Well, Stephen, some of us have (other) full time jobs and kids so, I’ll be completely and totally ecstatic if I can knock out a full first draft in 6 months. 

I’m halfway through Act 3 of a (maybe) 4 Act novel (that’s where I’ve gone BTW). Can I knock it out my the end of the month? And the voice in my head says, “But there’s Mardi Gras, y’all!” That voice is real. So is the nagging need to push my characters! But seriously, Mardi Gras waits for no man (or woman, or teenager trying to save the world). 

Update: I was first working on this blog post back in February but never posted because I was (attempting) to put every spare minute into finishing the first draft. I’m happy to report that I did complete the first draft for all four acts of my latest novel (working title: Building Eden) in April— all 95,000 words. (I know word count isn’t everything, but it’s an achievement for me). Now I have delved back into polishing A Place Between (re-wrote the first 2 pages, they are much better now) will be posting the revised first chapter soon. Hoping for a Fall publishing date for APB, we will see!