There are two sides to every coin. In writing, the two sides are drafting and revising.

One of them is mostly fun, the other is mostly awful. First I’m going to discuss drafting- my usual process, the parts of it that I love, and the parts of it I don’t love so much. Then, I’ll discuss revising, and why it usually plunges me into the Bog of Eternal Stench.

Drafting

Why I love drafting

My favorite thing about drafting is the high that comes from creation. When I’m putting down the words of a story for the first time, conjuring events and characters from nothing but my own brain and a shitty outline that any Creative Writing major would rip in half, it really feels like magic. For me, it gives me the creative equivalent of a runner’s high. I’ll get completely lost, forgetting the world around me while I’m seeing these things play out (this is bad when I’m writing at work).

Many writers don’t write this way. They outline heavily with tons of detail, knowing everything that will happen before they ever write a single sentence of prose. I wish I was like that- I might not struggle so much with plot if I did.

But I’ve tried, and I just can’t pull my reins in tight like that. Those writers are highly trained professional horses doing dressage; I am a three-year-old Arab mare tossing my head anytime I’m asked to stay in line (this is not a good thing).

Why am I like this? I don’t know. All I do know is that drafting a story for the first time and seeing where it takes me feels like flying through the countryside on the back of a horse, the wind pulling back my hair, bugs getting stuck in my teeth. (We’ve reached the end of the horse metaphors now, sorry.)

My Drafting Process

While not every one of my projects has began and gone exactly the same way, I have a usual process. Like I mentioned above, I’m a lukewarm mix between a plotter and a pantser. Mostly.

The Silverwing

A great example of my most-pantsed story is my first novel, The Silverwing.

It was my first attempt at long-form fiction, and it all began during a free write session. I think I even still have that paper somewhere (I wrote the first section of the prologue by hand). I found myself thinking about ghost ships, which would be found sailing on the winds, no crew aboard alive or dead. It was quite common during the age of exploration, when voyages would often meet foul ends. While thinking on this, an image came to my mind: the ruler of a great naval Empire receiving the news that a very important ship carrying important information has returned with none of the crew. How would he react? What kind of person is he, and how would his personality affect his reaction? What would he do to the people who brought him the bad news? And most importantly, what happened to the missing crew? Thus, Governor Banner was born, and the world of The Silverwing.

That was just how it started. The entire first draft of the novel was pantsed. It took me a long time to write, I think about two years, because I would get stuck looking for the next plot point. But I did finish, and like I’ve heard from many writers, the final quarter or so just flew out of me like diarrhea.

And it was not good.

I know first drafts are supposed to be messy, but this was like trying to eat a taco while driving. There was no character arc, no conflict, and most of the characters’ motivations were unclear. It was really only any good toward the end, where you can see me noticeably getting better at writing and creating conflict and action. I’ve since revised and completed three more drafts of the story, and I’m much happier with it now. And while two rounds of agent querying with it got me nothing, I still love it very much, and the sequel I started is knocking on the closed door in my brain.

I learned a lot from that experience, and my other projects I’ve started since then have been a little bit more intentional. A little bit.

Father Cruz

When I wrote Father Cruz, the second novel draft I ever finished, it was a bit more intentional. While I pantsed most of the story beats, I did have an endpoint in mind: an attempt at exorcising Father Cruz’s demon once and for all. Most of the center of the sandwich, the plot between his becoming possessed and the final exorcism, was still very pantsed. I didn’t do a formal outline for this one either- just the notes app on my phone when I thought of the next plot point.

I’ve gone through and done one revision since finishing this one, and it still feels a little gooey in the middle. I think it needs a few more minutes in the oven still.

Other projects- less pants and more plot

Around my third or fourth novel project idea, I realized I wanted to do a little bit more plotting. I didn’t feel like the plotting tools suggested by many others fit exactly how my brain wanted to put down the information, so I went into Excel and just made my own plot outline template.

Essentially, what we’ve got going on here are just four quadrants that I can write whatever in. Usually, each quadrant represents the setup, rising action, climax, and falling action/conclusion. I really like the simplicity of it, and how I’m not confined when thinking of what’s going to happen in my story. It’s essentially just a stream of consciousness of me figuring out the plot in a low-pressure space. Every time I’ve sat down to fill one of these out for a new project, I’ve walked away with the entire novel plotted out, or at least the major points.

I used this baby to figure out the broad strokes of both Malthea novels, Stasis, Kaja, and Project Space Cowboy. With the exception of Stasis, I now know exactly where each of these stories are going and how they’re going to end. It feels like cheating to use this, because the hardest thing about writing for me is plotting, and once I have the plot outlined in my goofy little sentences in my quadrants, I have the entire story. I just have to write it, which for me, is the easiest part.

I do still need to do this for Venetian Mask, but I’m not planning on doing any outlining for Project Wishbone. Since that one is the most literary of all my projects, I want to pants it. I want it to flow like real life, and that means taking things as they come.

What I don’t like about drafting

There is one element of drafting that, often, is my worst enemy during the process: the insecurity. I know that every creative person reading this has been mid-creation, whether it’s a story or work of art or even crocheting a scarf, when you start to doubt yourself and the work, wondering, “Will anyone even like this?”

It’s inevitable. No matter your level of success, we all feel things like imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and pessimism as we’re creating. This is what gets me down the most during the drafting process, and it’s caused me significant stretches of stuck gears. I’m going through it right now with both my Scrolls of Malthea projects.

The bad news: this will never stop happening as long as you create.

The good news: it always passes.

Once I get over the midpoint hump and start heading for homebase with a story, all that insecurity tends to go away, because I now know where I’m going and how things are going to end. And when I write the words “the end”, all that matters is that I wrote a goddamned novel, and no one can take that away.

In Summary: Drafting Rocks

Drafting, for me, is where the joy of creation comes from. Creating something out of nothing, even if it’s inspired by other works, is the most human act we can do, and it’s why AI will never be able to beat out real writers and creators. The high I get from a good drafting session, vomiting out 4200 words in a day of pure plot movement and character moments, is why I’ll never need to smoke weed.

The Flipside: Revising

Now for the not-so-fun part. Revising is where the hopelessness really takes hold of me.

What I like about revising

It feels a little bit like walking along the beach with a metal detector. Every now and then you’ll stumble across a bit of something buried in the sand- a typo, an incorrect verb tense, clunky phrasing, overuse of a certain word- and it’s very satisfying to dig those out. I’ll also occasionally see a place where I can allude to a later plot point earlier, planting seeds for the reader to put things together as they go.

My Revising Process

If you’ve read the acknowledgments in Losing Air, you know that all of my manuscripts are seen by my dad before anyone else. It’s actually one of the recommended forms of revision- getting a second set of eyes, or beta reader, to look at the work from an outside perspective.

Now, some will probably say it’s a bad idea to use a family member for this purpose, as their feedback will be biased, not wanting to hurt your feelings. And that is a real danger if you pick somebody that is afraid to be blunt with you.

Thankfully, I got lucky enough that my dad is not only a lifelong admirer of the craft of fiction (over 60 years of being a reader!), but he has a great ability to separate me from the story. When I finish a draft (or sometimes even a section of a draft), I’ll pass along the manuscript to him, and once he goes through and reads it, marking it up as he goes, we get together and review his suggestions.

Now, I get two in one with my dad. Not only does he act as a beta reader, giving feedback on my character development, plot points, theme, and structure, but he’s also a fantastic line editor, catching all the little grammar and clarity mistakes that I gloss over because I’ve read the same words twenty times already. So we have these wonderful hybrid sessions where we fix not only the mechanical issues with the novel, but the narrative issues as well.

An editing session with my dad usually does wonders for my connection and passion for the story. Getting to talk with a real person about the characters I’ve come to love and where they go is very vitalizing, and it always makes me excited to go home and buff the rough story to a better shine.

That’s when I get to the thing I don’t like about revising.

What I don’t like about revising

Once you’ve gone over everything with a fine-toothed comb, you realize how many weird little mistakes, plot holes, and underdeveloped characters you actually had. This energizing work of art that’s brought you the high of pure creation for months or years suddenly has all of its flaws pointed out and glowing red at you.

This is especially demoralizing if you realize you’ll need to do a major rewrite to fix a plot issue or give a character a better arc. This happened to me with The Silverwing. Both my beta readers, my dad and my cousin Walt (hi Walt!) gave me the most important feedback of the whole project: Captain Riggs started with nothing to overcome.

They were incredibly correct, and I’m very thankful that they pointed it out to me, because nobody’s going to want to read a story where the main character is already at the top. This made me realize I would need a major rewrite of the first 2/3 of the novel: Riggs needed to start out as first mate and earn the role of Captain he’s been striving for his whole life. It was the change that fixed this story and made me actually confident in it.

But being faced with the knowledge that I would need to do such a big rewrite had me hesitating for a while. That relief of typing the words “the end” is taken away, and it’s scary to have to find a new peg to shove into the hole of the old, crappy plot point you have to fix. It made me feel confined, like I had to write something new that still melded with the connective tissue that led to the parts I wasn’t changing.

How I get around it

This was around the time I gave that advice to Saige for an old article of hers, Writing Advice From My Fellow Aspiring Authors. Essentially what I discovered during this process was this: in your story, you are God. You are confined by nothing but your own rules and laws. If those rules and laws don’t work with something you’ve done, change them.

Realizing this during that rewrite made me feel such relief. Until a story is published, it is yours to change however you need. There’s no reason to confine yourself to rules of your own making that aren’t working for you anymore.

In Summary: A Necessary Evil

Revising can be demoralizing, forcing you to stare at all your mistakes in the face. It can also feel like an impossible task, fixing something and trying to make it work without just starting the whole thing over. But it’s a required part of the process, and should be an expected part of a real writing career. I’ve read self-published works that very clearly went through little to no revision, and that’s not the level of effort I will accept as a reader or writer. So, while it may hurt and take away the joy you remembered from the drafting phase, it is crucial to composing a piece of fiction that readers will enjoy.

Stay strong through your revisions, knowing I’m right there with you with my head in my hands, wondering how I’m going to patch all my plot holes.

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Monthly Writing Goals Update

30,878 / 20,000 words

I don’t think I should pretend to be humble and act like I haven’t done pretty well this month. Not only did I finally finish the first draft of my gothic novella Kaja, I also started another new project that’s going to be quite different from anything I’ve done so far. I don’t want to give anything away yet, but prepare yourselves for an announcement quite soon.

I also really liked the temp goal I came up with for finishing Kaja: at least 1,000 words written every weekday. That’s a pretty short writing session for me, and I think it’s much better for my work ethic and productivity to be writing more often, even if it’s in smaller chunks. Keeping my head in the story consistently will, I hope, make my projects feel more cohesive, not like they were written in sporadic spurts months apart (my old style). So, I’m adding a secondary monthly writing goal!

Starting next post, I will be tracking total words for the month out of 20,000, and I will be tracking how many weekdays I hit the goal of at least one 1,000 word writing session every weekday. Wish me luck!

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