The first thing you have to understand is that I am an inefficient writer. I have tried to changed this over the years, but in that time I have come to realise (and grudging accept) that this is just how it is for me. By the time I have finished the first draft of a manuscript, whether it's a novel, a gamebook or a story, it will be roughly 150% as long as the final draft will be.
Take, for example, the short story I completed today. It was commissioned to be 8,000 words long. The first draft ran to 12,000, but once I had finished editing it, it was just over 8,000. This is because I am very indecisive and my first draft is full of all the alternative ways of phrasing things that I could use, and which I don't finally decide upon until the final edit. My first drafts are also littered with notes, and prompts, and even ideas for other stories, which don't get taken out until the edit.
It can also take me a long time to finish a short story. For example, I started #59 on Monday 6th May and today is Wednesday 12th June. And here is a list of the days I actually worked on the story:
Monday 6th May
Monday 13th May
Wednesday 22nd May
Thursday 23rd May
Wednesday 5th June
Friday 7th June
Saturday 8th June
Sunday 9th June
Monday 10th June
Tuesday 11th June
Wednesday 12th June
As you can see, I haven't worked on the story every day since 6th May, but I have been thinking about it a lot during that time. The trouble is, I never have just one project on the go at the same time. While writing #59 I have also been putting the finishing touches to my ACE Gamebook 'TWAS - The Krampus Night Before Christmas, I've prepped and launched a Kickstarter for a role-playing game, I've been organising and promoting Fighting Fantasy Fest 3, I've worked on a proposal for something new, I've tinkered with some other ideas, and I attended the UK Games Expo. On top of all that, I'm also a Dad, with all the commitments that brings, and I have a part-time non-writing-related job.
When I start writing a story, it always takes me a while to get into it, to get to know the characters and feel the flow of the narrative, no matter how detailed a plot synopsis I have prepared before actually putting fingers to keyboard. At this stage of the process, I also find I get easily distracted. The Internet is great for research, but once I open a window to fact-check something for my story before I know it I'm on Facebook, or checking my emails for the umpteenth time, or tweaking my Twitter profile.
Procrastination is also a problem, because getting started is hard. I will sometimes put off writing to do something else, which maybe still needs doing but isn't actually as pressing, such as prepping updates for my blog. However, as you can see from the catalogue of days worked, once I get into the swing of the story I become much more focused, until by the time I'm working on the final edit I will work on nothing else until it is done.
You may be interested to know that I spent 18 hours writing Story #59 and another 11 hours editing (or re-writing, if you like), proofreading, and applying the final corrections before sending the story off. This means that before any royalties the story may earn in the future, I may not have earned big bucks writing it, but at least it's more than the minimum living wage.
Of course, the actual writing is only half the story. Rewriting, as much as I hate it sometimes, is key. As Neil Gaiman says in an advert for his masterclass that keeps popping up on YouTube whenever I try to watch anything*, "The process of doing your second draft is a process of making it look like you knew what you were doing all along."
As well as sorting out all the kinks in the story - discovering a character was carrying one type of weapon at the start, which magically transformed into an entirely different weapon halfway through - it's a chance to put in some foreshadowing, cool character traits, and even some red herrings, just to keep the future reader on their toes.
And I think this is why I feel such elation when I finish the spell-check and save the final draft, before submitting it. Because I don't particularly enjoy the process of rewriting, it feels like an achievement just to have got through it. And maybe it's also because by the end, I feel that I've written something that I think someone else will enjoy reading**.
To give you a better idea of my process, here is a single from Story #59 in all its many and varied forms, from first draft to final draft.
Click to enlarge
There will doubtless be revisions and re-writes to come, but for the time being I am enjoying the feeling of simply having finished writing something. And so tonight I am going to treat myself by starting work on a new project I've been dying to get my teeth into for ages!
* When I should be writing!
** In this case my fellow scribe Clint Werner in particular!
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