First Draft Take 2: Starting Again

Here's a post I wrote 2.5 years ago titled The Truth About First Drafts. I'll sum it up for you: First drafts usually stink. As Hemingway said, The first draft of anything is s**t. First drafts are a quagmire of half-formed themes, of thin plot lines & dropped threads, of characters who started out named Mark somehow ended up named Mike. First drafts are the kitchen when you're halfway through preparing that massive and complex meal: A complete mess. It's been a long time... years... since I've stared a first draft in the face. A month ago, I handed in a final draft of a novel. That sweet, spell-checked, edited, organized beast of a final draft that will never be perfect but it's pretty good to me. I birthed it and raised it and loved it and sent it out into the world.

Time to let it go. Time to start again.

I began my first novel by writing 50 pages at the Muskoka Novel Marathon. I was working from a one-page outline that dropped off at the end of the first act. I had a premise but not a plan. With the second novel, I'm trying a different approach by creating a thorough outline, the writer's equivalent of using an elaborate recipe. The best cooks may not need one; maybe they can add and remove and dabble and correct and invent as they go. But I'm pretty sure writing the first book without a strong outline made the process more complex and lengthy than it needed to be. Because I wrote a thriller with thriller elements like plot twists and red herrings and sneaky characters doing sneaky things, not having an intricate plan made for a lot of stops and starts later. In essence, if you're writing a whodunit, it's a good idea to know whodunit before you start.

I'm no fool: I know that an outline won't absolve me of extensive editing. I know that the first draft will still be a big mess. But this time I'm hoping for some method to the madness. I've often gone back to these two little essays by Andrew Pyper and Sheila Heti, each taking a side on whether to outline or not. Both make excellent points. Last time I was with Heti, and this time I'm with Pyper. I'll let you know whose side I'm officially on when I finish the second book.

On a practical note, there are some tools of the trade that writers can use for outlining. My most beloved writing software Scrivener has features that support the planning stage. I've also tried The SnowFlake Method, a program designed specifically to help writers build a plan before they begin writing. Here's the idea: Think of a snowflake. You start in the centre with a premise, and you slowly build the complexity from there. The software is well-designed and easy to use, leaving lots of room in my brain for pesky creative things like inventing characters and putting them in dicey situations.

This time I'm not as afraid of the first draft. I'm ready, outline in hand. I'm prepared to get messy. Here I go.

STILL MINE

Writers might tell you about the weeks right before a book goes to copyedit and the scramble it takes to get the final edits done. I am in that phase right now. The book flies out of my hands in about two weeks. So I'm writing, editing, tidying, checking, fiddling, hoping. In the meantime, things are starting to happen to this book outside of my brain/computer.

It has a title. Still Mine.

It has a publication date: April 5, 2016. 

It has a pre-order page at Chapters.

The next year will be a thrilling time, preparing for the publication of this book, seeing cover art and galleys and ARCs, working with the sales and publicity teams, and finishing the first draft of the second novel in the series. I can't wait!

For now, back to work.

A Publishing Deal

This week the two-book deal I signed with Simon & Schuster Canada was announced on Publishers' Marketplace and Quill & Quire. There must be a word to describe this exact feeling, the mix of joy and relief and fear and wonder and gratitude and validation. Maybe the word is thrilled. I am thrilled to now be a part of the Simon & Schuster Canada’s 2015 roster. I am thrilled that editor extraordinaire Martha Sharpe is working on the manuscript with me to get it stage ready. I am thrilled that I’m supposed to write a second book to go with the first. Scary – in a good way. The thought of a cover with my name on it, of my novel on a shelf in a bookstore… thrilling.

There’s also the humbling act of counting out everyone who’s played a part. Ian... in so many more ways than I can count, but also my parents and sisters, my three boys, my whole family, my amazing agent Chris Bucci, my sage Kendall Anderson, my first reader/thesis champion Lisa Moore, my earliest and gentlest readers, my friends and neighbours, my retreat partner Mariska Gatha, the women in my book club, my UBC cohort, my teaching colleagues, my students. A hundred more names to add to these.

In the first week after the offer came, when I was still too stunned to process it, it happened more than once that someone else's joy in the news reminded me that this was what I’ve wanted, this is why I’ve worked so hard for so long. People brought me champagne and insisted I stop for a minute to raise a glass. Forget about the logistics - how will it all get done? – and savour it.

And in my short time on the inside, I’ve been caught up in the swell of fiercely devoted and intelligent people who make up the book industry, who love books and work tirelessly to put them in our hands. It’s encouraging no matter what the realities of publishing might be these days.

I can’t wait for what the next year brings.

A pile of drafts = a novel.

I wandered around my house today and collected each of the drafts I printed along the way in the quest to finish my novel. These drafts are dated:

February 29, 2012

October 3, 2012

June 9, 2013

September 19, 2013

This (really high) pile of words acts as a time capsule for the past few years of my life. In July 2010, I sat down for the first time at the Muskoka Novel Marathon and wrote 50 pages of some version of this book. Two months later, I was surprised to learn that those pages had won first prize in the fiction category. So, I kept going. It took me a year and a half to finish the first draft, with a baby born in between. By the time I was done that draft, my littlest son was starting to crawl and my oldest was halfway through his first year at school. By the second, I'd signed with a wonderful agent who believed in the project and encouraged me to keep working. By the third, I was back to teaching full-time. By the last one, my middle boy was in school too and most people in my life recognized that writing was something I did.

About halfway along, I wrote this post about the whole process and my hopes for this book. I never counted the hours as I was writing, but I know there were a lot of them - time alone, time away from my family, time not doing other things. A lot was poured into it. My husband earned thirty-six imaginary gold medals for Best Husband of a Writer, one for each month, and all the days within it, that he shooed me away to write.

I know there are more drafts to come, but for now the novel has gone from being written to being read, if only by a select few. I know finishing a novel shouldn’t be the end goal in itself, but right now it feels pretty good.

But I hate to be alone...

Ferry to Island

Because I fancy myself a writer, I like to think I am an introvert too, a craver of solitude. When the day-to-day of family life is particularly grinding, I’ve often used the evenings hours to google things like “cabin retreat” or “writing escape” with visions of myself alone in the woods with nothing but a calcified kettle and a rickety table for my laptop. Scrolling through the results, I actually deselect options like “WiFi” and “Close to Town” because apparently I’m the sort of person who wants to be alone for days and days so I can write.

But, I’m not. On a windswept weekend in June, I left my gaggle of children with my brave husband and boarded the ferry from downtown for the 10-minute ride to Toronto Island. That I was the lone passenger on the ferry probably wasn’t the best omen, but it felt somehow Victorian, my bags on my lap on the damp bench with all those old red lifejackets tucked into netting overhead. Out the window the rain fell sideways. Victorian and writerly, right? Except I spent most of the ferry ride texting my sister. About my kids.

On the western tip of the islands is Gibraltar Point. This used to be what we born-and-raised Toronto kids called The Island School. It is now an artist retreat/colony/work space run by Artscape, a Toronto non-profit. My lovely and gracious host picked me up at the island terminal then showed me to my private space, an old school portable converted into a studio. I was by myself, no children or obligations aside from writing for 2 whole days. The stuff of dreams. Yet as soon as my host pulled the door closed behind me, I texted my husband to say I’d be on the next ferry home. If it wasn’t for the pelting rain and the 25-minute walk back to the island terminal, I would have left. Stay, my husband wrote. You are not allowed to come home. He knows me well. Next came a walk on the beach with ocean-worthy storm surges. Two ducks sat on the sand with their wings shielding their bills from the wind. Instead of admiring them, I pulled out my Iphone and tried to secure a photograph to text to my husband, sisters, best friend and mother. I wanted to share even the mundane details of this experience with them.

There were other people at the retreat. They seemed happy there, alone with their art. Some of them planned to stay for a month. These are people with the true artist’s temperament. Making art is life, and everything else is waiting for the next chance to make art. When I wandered over to the common space and struck up a conversation, they had trouble looking me in the eye, though they smiled often and asked me many questions about my work. My work. Right. I worked all weekend. In fact, I wrote almost 10000 words – a magnificent tally. But the entire time I longed for those people I so readily left.

In the seven years I have been writing seriously, two things about me have changed. For one, I have developed my own version of the artistic temperament. It allows me to conjure my characters at any time, even when surrounded by the din of my children. I suss out their strengths and flaws by surmising how they might handle a standoff with my 3-year old, the true test of anyone’s character. When I am away from writing for too long, I feel strange, sad, edgy. This is my artsy side. I hide it well from others. The other thing I’ve learned, something I probably should have figured out years ago, is that I am not a solitary writer. I am not a solitary person. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I hate being alone.

 So now, I google a different kind of escape. Somewhere with a house for my family, and then a shed where I can write. The perfect balance. Leave me be when I am writing. But when the writing is done, bring me back to my people.