If I’m at a beach or a lakeshore, I’m one of those people who inches my way into the water, one excruciating shock of cold at a time. But with writing, even when I have no idea what I’m going to say, I just grab my pen or my keyboard and dive in!
Tim Marshall timmarshall, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
That’s what this week has been about, as I’ve now committed to exploring the murky idea I have for another YA novel. My goal has been to write two handwritten pages every day. I try not to edit as I go, even as shoddy writing dominates and the plot/character contradictions pile up. I even try not to read what I’ve written the day before when I begin, because I know that if I do I’m going to get bogged down in trying to revise it–and I may not even use the scenes I’m generating. I only read enough to jog my memory so I can continue to go forward.
Some people love first-draft writing because they can make up whatever they want without worrying about it. I find doing the first draft of a prose piece the hardest part of the writing process. Conjuring people and situations out of wisps of my consciousness always feels daunting, and outlines feel even harder. I need to actually write to discover what I’m going to say.
Eventually, I hope I’ll come to a point where the ideas will feel more clear and I’ll have a better sense of the characters and overall trajectory, even if I still might not know exactly how the book will end. This will be when I’ll start typing up what I have, revising as I go, but likely saving anything I’ve cut in a different file in case I want to refer to it later. Then, I’ll probably keep writing two-page segments until I get to a possible end, but likely I’ll do this on the keyboard and allow myself more leeway in polishing what I’ve written before continuing.
This won’t nearly be the end of the process.
After I’ve written my way through beginning, middle, and end, I’ll put the manuscript away for a few weeks. Then I’ll read the whole thing through with a fresher eye to get a sense of it, making notes to myself on what needs to be added, cut or changed. Then the more intensive revision will start. This is the part I like–when I finally emerge from the thick woods and can see a thin path leading me on, as long as I’m willing to chop away the overgrowth and do some bushwhacking.
Once I get that draft done, I’ll share it with my fiction-writing group (and perhaps a few other people) to get their perspective about what is working and what isn’t. Likely, their feedback will inspire me to rethink the entire novel, generating another revision, which could focus on structure, character development, plot points etc. Depending on how confident I feel about that revision, I may ask my writing group to read the book again.
And again. And so it goes.
Eventually I’ll get to a point where I’m ready for micro-editing: searching for overused words, clunky phrases, wordiness, etc. I do some of this throughout my revisions, but considering not all the prose I generate will ultimately make it into the final draft, it’s been time-efficient to save focusing on this until the end.
When the book is as good as I can get it to be, even if it isn’t perfect, I’ll test the waters by sending it out. If it’s accepted, I’ll likely have more editing to do. I’ve been lucky in that every editor I’ve worked with has helped me make a book substantially better.
And if it doesn’t get accepted for publication, I may revisit and revise from time to time, if the book still holds interest for me. Or, I might just need to be satisfied with my enjoyment of the process. And yes, I do ultimately, enjoy the process of writing long prose. Why else would I have written 11 novels and one non-fiction memoir?
Time once again to brave the cold water and dive in.
But now that I’m–thankfully–about 80% recovered, and preparing for my 
He was reportedly the only person in weeks that people had heard about who received a positive outcome form the infamous tent courts. And as witnesses gathered around to offer him a place to stay for the night and assistance to get to his brother in Florida, he told us the key to his “success.” I told them the gangs had killed my entire family. Other than my brother, I have no one.
Don’t Look Away! the sign read on the American side of the border, where witnesses stood every day, reminding us of our responsibility not to tune out.
Things seemed pleasantly normal in the hour before the big event. People donned eclipse glasses to sneak views of the disappearing sun, children ran through the grass playing, and adults waited in lines for free pizza cooked in the community stone oven or to silk-screen a t-shirt as an Eclipse Day souvenir. 
But when totality hit, something shifted in the energy. There was a hush among the crowd, a kind of collective “wow.” My eclipse glasses now dark, I was nervous about viewing the corona with unprotected eyes, but there it was, eerie and other-worldly, the tiny ring of light flaring in asymmetrical bursts before settling to a steady glow like a small spark of hope.
Though being forced to write was a good thing, I have to admit I regretted not getting the immediate gratification of people’s reactions to the cherry blossoms in Kunming, or my musings on Substack, which made me wonder–what is it about we humans in the social media age that makes us feel that everything we do needs to be immediately validated? True confessions, I am one of those people who obsessively looks for likes and feedback for anything I post on the big cyber cloud. Sometimes I worry that this has a negative impact on my writing–whether in sharing groups, I’m too quick to read something half-finished, simply for the joy of hearing people’s reactions to it. But I do like to think that reading things out loud, even early drafts, sharpens my own ear for what’s working or not working in a piece. In fact, one of my favorite revision techniques is to read a piece out loud even if I’m the only person listening.