Silly Concerns and Lofty Ideals
I have a little over 8,000 words in my novel right now. I’m writing Chapter 3. Chapter three is exciting because it’s where the story really begins, where the protagonist makes a decision that spurs her into a new world. Following the Plot Embryo method, Chapters one and two were the “YOU” (establish protagonist), Chapter three this is the “NEED” (establishing what the main character wants) and the next chapter will be “GO” (setting out to get what she wants).
I already have some anxiety about my completed novel being too short. A standard novel length is 80,000 words, which would mean I’m already 1/10 of the way through the story. Fantasy/sci-fi books often are more in the 100,000-120,000 word count. Also, I worry my novel will classify as YA (young adult) because my protagonist is a young girl at the start of the story. She will age throughout the book, but will that matter? I want to write for adults, but there are very few instances where an author can pull off a young protagonist that doesn’t get shelved in the YA section (Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series being a notable exception). Or write a young adult book that also appeals to adults (Harry Potter being the obvious exception to that rule).
These are the silly thoughts that are bothering me right now, and they’re so irrelevant I know I shouldn’t waste my time thinking about them. So what if my future manuscript turns out YA? If that’s the story that pours out when I write, what’s wrong with that? Maybe it will be, maybe it won’t be. Even if it is YA, that doesn’t prevent me from writing an adult fantasy in the future. There is no way for me to predict how long my manuscript will be at this point. I’m still at the beginning. And it’s just a draft.
I recently listened to a webinar in which the speaker referred to a first draft as a “vomit draft”, because you’re spilling out the words that get your story down on paper. This aligns with the “zero draft” method I mentioned in a previous blog post. I stumbled across this quote by Terry Pratchett, which resonated with my process at the moment:
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
Despite all these reassurances, I still sit down to write sometimes and very little gets typed. I distract myself with more “learning” on YouTube or blogs. Every serious author agrees; there is no waiting for the muse. Writer’s block doesn’t exist, it’s just an unwillingness to buckle down and get shit done. The solution, everyone says, is making a schedule and sticking to it. You may not be happy with what you write, but the important part is getting the story down. I can fix everything in editing.
With that in mind, for the rest of the month, I’m going to try writing 3,500 words per week. Those words all need to be in my novel (blog posts don’t count). My justification for this word count is that if I were to write 3,500 words per week through the rest of the year, I would have 100,000 words by the end of September/beginning of October. That’s a whole dang book.
With a first draft complete, many writers and editors recommend a clean break. Take at minimum one month, or six weeks, or even longer, to put your manuscript in a locked drawer (figurative locked drawer, since it will be a file on my computer), and don’t look at it. That way, when I come back for edits, I can review it as objectively as possible. So if I give myself October/November(ish) as a break, I can edit starting in December. And hopefully by this time next year, I’ll either be ready for beta readers or professional editors, and publish by summer 2023.
That all feels pretty lofty. It’s not a concrete plan at this moment, just a fuzzy idea. Right now, I’m just going to see if I can manage 3,500 words a week for the rest of March. Then I’ll evaluate and form a more realistic timeline and objectives to get there.
