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Thursday 5 June 2014

Does a first draft take longer for a second novel?




Entrance to Great Hall at Syon House

The second most popular post on this blog, (after The pros and cons of writing in first person present tense, which surprisingly gets a lot of hits) is If only I'd known this when I wrote my first draft. This was an early post, written before I'd properly embarked on the first draft for my second novel.

I wrote the first draft of my first novel very quickly, probably because I didn’t know much about creative writing. If I got stuck, I moved to a later scene. My writing style was terrible: overwriting, overuse of adjectives, telling not showing, all the usual mistakes; but I worked out the story and the backstory by just getting on with it. Writing the first draft of a second novel is a different matter. Now I know more about writing and perhaps sometimes have overthought what I’m doing. Initial excitement about getting a novel published has been slightly knocked by rejections (only slightly!). And dealing with more than one book can dilute writing time.

Last night I went to Alison Morton’s book launch for Successio, book three of the Roma Nova series, a lovely and inspiring evening-she certainly knows how to launch a book with style! I enjoyed Sue Cook’s questions about why Alison chose to write about Romans (her father knew a lot about them), why alternative history; development of the main characters and how she approaches the writing process.

During her conversation with Sue, Alison mentioned that when she writes a first draft: she aims to write 500-1000 words per day, doesn’t look back (ie: no editing) and she doesn’t worry if the same word appears three times in the same sentence. She said that the key is to get the story out. I agree that when writing first drafts, this should be the main goal and I’m pinning a GET THE STORY OUT! post-it to the noticeboard above my desk as a reminder. In depth research, editing and development of sub-plots can come with subsequent drafts.

Alison’s enthusiasm for writing is infectious and I admire her ability to produce novel after novel-she has another series of three in the pipeline! Thanks to Alison for inviting me to a wonderful evening and I wish her the best of luck with Successio.

10 comments:

  1. Great post, Anita, and thank you for joining me at the SUCCESSIO launch.
    Bashing out your story gives you the burst of creative energy to see you through the more pedestrian, but fascinating reviewing/refining/detailed research stages. Good luck with 'The Painting'!

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  2. I really enjoyed reading this post. Up until now, I’ve also gone for just getting everything down, and not looking back until the first draft’s done. This time around, however, I keep finding it hard to get back into writing after a morning at work. I’ve begun to trick myself into re-starting by editing a very short bit of what I wrote the day before, before ploughing on. Somehow this seems to help – not sure why!

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    1. Thanks so much for your comment Clare and for retweeting this post. It's tricky as I go through phases of working differently. At the moment, I really need to up the word count for my RNA NWS submission, so I'm not looking back, to stop myself from dithering! x

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  3. Thanks for your post, Anita. I wrote my first YA novel fairly quickly, mainly because I kept going whilst the idea was still burning inside. I've been struggling a lot more with the second one and I know I am over thinking! I really like your goal of just 'getting the story out.' A mantra I will now be inserting in my head, to replace the all too common 'is this good enough??'

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    1. It seems to be working (so far) for me! Best of luck with your writing Vikki.

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  4. Sequels always take me longer to draft and not just because they are longer than book one. ;) I usually have to go back and fact check a lot from book one because I like to reference things. That always takes time and then there's the balance of reminding the reader what they need to know from book one and not info dumping. It's tough.

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    1. Writing sequels must be difficult as there is so much info to remember. Thanks for your comment Kelly.

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  5. Interesting post Anita. I have to agree, it's amazing how writing evolves. I've learnt all the same things, overwriting and over use of adjectives being my worst crime. Recently had my first rejection, ouch!

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    1. Hi Heather, lovely to hear from you! Sorry to hear about the rejection-rejections are rubbish, so disheartening, but I think it's a numbers game and recently I've learnt (finally-it's taken long enough!) that getting on with the next project is the best way to deal with them. Enjoying your posts about France!

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