In the world of writing novels, there are few axioms that apply all the time.
One of them, perhaps the most important, is that the first job of writing a novel is to finish the first draft. Wait, let me put in some emphasis: Finish The FIRST DRAFT.
This sounds easier than it is. Countless writers get well into the first draft of their new novel, whether it is their first or 50th novel, and hit so many dead ends and seemingly inscrutable problems that it's easy to give up and quit. Or you think, I'll just put this monstrosity aside until it seems more clear to me.
Putting it aside for a few days or even a week or two is fine. But you always have to remind yourself that it is only when you have finished a first draft that you can begin to really understand the shape of the thing you're building.
Another rule of writing novels is that good writing comes from rewriting over and over. Your first draft is just a draft. It will be filled with crapola (technical writing term). But of course, you can't rewrite and start making consistent nice sentences and paragraphs and chapters without first having a First Draft. You can't shape your characters into living breathing people who have hopes and dreams and fears and worries until they've been roughed out in your First Draft.
So I'm very pleased give you a progress report. I've finished the First Draft on Owen McKenna #19.
It is rough the way crushed limestone is rough. It is awkward the way a kid making his first phone call to ask someone out on a date is awkward. It is filled with unfulfilled hopes for future good writing. It is like the Winchester Mystery House, with doorways that open onto thin air, and staircases that go nowhere. It contains bad writing, adolescent writing, purple prose writing, melodramatic writing, boring writing.
But that is the nature of a First Draft.
Now that I've completed that daunting First Draft, I can move onto the easier stuff of making it a little better on each page and each day. I can identify all the exposition that simply needs to be deleted. I can fix the mixed metaphors or get rid of them. I can make the hero more heroic and the bad guy waymo bad. I can add some intelligence. I can get rid of my faulty attempts at cleverness. I can take out what Mark Twain disparaged as twenty-five cent words and replace them with nickel words. I can endeavor to have every bit of dialogue do double duty as both showing what the people said but also revealing their character.
Tune in come May or June after the book has been through four editors and endured seventeen rewrites. I'll send out an email as publication gets close.
Thanks again to all of my readers who care about these stories. I owe my career to all of you.
