Ruth ate breakfast at her son’s table. The familiar food,
bacon and eggs, was a meal her family had shared many years, but the flatware
had an unfamiliar weight to it. The whole kitchen was like that. She could see
things from her own house, a knife block, a pan, a refrigerator magnet; things
she had given to her son when he first moved out on his own. These things were
few and far between though, scattered among the unfamiliar. Ruth ate her bacon
and considered how things had changed. She was being served breakfast by her
now grown son.
I read somewhere that every year thousands of people try to write a novel and quit after the first chapter. Having recently written a first chapter, I can attest to the ease with which one can write chapter one. Having begun editing a completed manuscript, I can attest to the ease with which one can write an entire first draft.
My sense is that a lot of non-authors, that is to say, people who haven't published, fret over their first draft. They worry about writing themselves into a corner, how they don't have time to write, how they will never finish at this rate, etc. Conversely, authors I have read about spend more time lamenting over the revision process. Now that I am knee deep in that process I can understand why.
But instead of using that nice segue to discuss why revisions are hard I am going to be like so many of my college professors and tell you what I am going to talk about, rather than simply getting on with it. Before I discuss why the revision process is so hard I will touch on why I feel the first draft of a manuscript is so easy. But before you write your first draft, you have to do some prep work.
You have to come up with an idea. Then you have to make it amazing. This can take awhile. It helps if you know why you are writing a book. Your reason may be something like, I want to write a novel because I think I have a cool story to tell. That's not specific enough. When Stephen King sits down to write a novel he wants to scare the hell out of you, not tell a scary story. After you've made your idea great, you need to outline your book, which is about as fun as it was back in high school. Eventually though, you can get it done.
In the first draft of a manuscript you are free to do whatever you want. You can experiment, you can only use adjectives beginning with A, whatever you want. You don't have to worry about grammar and you don't have to worry about spelling. All you have to do is worry about getting the story down.
After you get the story down, you will probably feel elated. You'll feel a strong sense of achievement, like you've gotten to the top of the mountain. There's also the feeling that you have created an interesting story that people will read and find engaging. If you are carefully containing your enthusiasm you will realize that you have some revisions to do and that not everyone will think your story is great.
After you get your draft back from your first serious editor you will realize that mountain you got to the top of, that was really Everest base camp and the summit is far, far away. Also, that story you think is so great, well, it's okay, but it needs some work. That psychic reward you were just feeling, it's gone now.
How realistic you were about the amount of work would remain after your first draft will help determine how difficult the rest of the process is. If you thought you had written the next Don Quixote, well, Don Quixote has a ton of errors in it, there just wasn't a lot for publishers to choose from, and you will probably have a glum streak to overcome before you can get some good edits in. If you were more realistic about your manuscript you will probably just need a bowl of ice cream and a good night's sleep.
Assuming you've overcome the letdown from realizing people won't be comparing you to Mark Twain you now have to deal with the fact that you are, once again, situated at Everest base camp. Instead of oxygen depletion, predatory frostbite, and vertical climbs, you must struggle against the ocular agony caused by looking for typos, again, the mental shut down caused by reading your entire manuscript, again, and the analysis paralysis caused by wondering if you should keep this paragraph or cut it, again.
If you overcome the aforementioned emotional gut punch and maintain the endurance necessary to get to the top of Editing Everest you still have to get you manuscript published. Congratulations, you've ceased to be a writer and have become a businessperson. After investing an astounding amount of sweat equity into producing a stack of paper with ink on it, you must now manifest a completely different set of skills to actually get your novel in the hands of someone other than your old English teacher or your mom.
That is why the first draft is the easiest part of the process. Take heart though, if you make it past the first draft you'll have invested so much work already that you may as well go through with the rest of it.
My sense is that a lot of non-authors, that is to say, people who haven't published, fret over their first draft. They worry about writing themselves into a corner, how they don't have time to write, how they will never finish at this rate, etc. Conversely, authors I have read about spend more time lamenting over the revision process. Now that I am knee deep in that process I can understand why.
But instead of using that nice segue to discuss why revisions are hard I am going to be like so many of my college professors and tell you what I am going to talk about, rather than simply getting on with it. Before I discuss why the revision process is so hard I will touch on why I feel the first draft of a manuscript is so easy. But before you write your first draft, you have to do some prep work.
You have to come up with an idea. Then you have to make it amazing. This can take awhile. It helps if you know why you are writing a book. Your reason may be something like, I want to write a novel because I think I have a cool story to tell. That's not specific enough. When Stephen King sits down to write a novel he wants to scare the hell out of you, not tell a scary story. After you've made your idea great, you need to outline your book, which is about as fun as it was back in high school. Eventually though, you can get it done.
In the first draft of a manuscript you are free to do whatever you want. You can experiment, you can only use adjectives beginning with A, whatever you want. You don't have to worry about grammar and you don't have to worry about spelling. All you have to do is worry about getting the story down.
After you get the story down, you will probably feel elated. You'll feel a strong sense of achievement, like you've gotten to the top of the mountain. There's also the feeling that you have created an interesting story that people will read and find engaging. If you are carefully containing your enthusiasm you will realize that you have some revisions to do and that not everyone will think your story is great.
After you get your draft back from your first serious editor you will realize that mountain you got to the top of, that was really Everest base camp and the summit is far, far away. Also, that story you think is so great, well, it's okay, but it needs some work. That psychic reward you were just feeling, it's gone now.
How realistic you were about the amount of work would remain after your first draft will help determine how difficult the rest of the process is. If you thought you had written the next Don Quixote, well, Don Quixote has a ton of errors in it, there just wasn't a lot for publishers to choose from, and you will probably have a glum streak to overcome before you can get some good edits in. If you were more realistic about your manuscript you will probably just need a bowl of ice cream and a good night's sleep.
Assuming you've overcome the letdown from realizing people won't be comparing you to Mark Twain you now have to deal with the fact that you are, once again, situated at Everest base camp. Instead of oxygen depletion, predatory frostbite, and vertical climbs, you must struggle against the ocular agony caused by looking for typos, again, the mental shut down caused by reading your entire manuscript, again, and the analysis paralysis caused by wondering if you should keep this paragraph or cut it, again.
If you overcome the aforementioned emotional gut punch and maintain the endurance necessary to get to the top of Editing Everest you still have to get you manuscript published. Congratulations, you've ceased to be a writer and have become a businessperson. After investing an astounding amount of sweat equity into producing a stack of paper with ink on it, you must now manifest a completely different set of skills to actually get your novel in the hands of someone other than your old English teacher or your mom.
That is why the first draft is the easiest part of the process. Take heart though, if you make it past the first draft you'll have invested so much work already that you may as well go through with the rest of it.
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