Non Hughes

Hello there!

After finishing the first draft of my current book project (Code Name: No Footings) at the end of March, I took a break of a month in order to reset, work on fun projects and get the story out of my head. Then I picked up the draft at the start of May, read it and made notes on what to improve.

And now it’s June, and I realise that I haven’t made any updates in all that time. So here’s an update, I suppose!

April: fun and games.

May: dark night of the soul.

June: ???

April was my month of rest, and I got lots of fun things done: wrote some fanfiction, for which the trickle of comments and kudos have been sending me a big mental boost; went on a Welsh-language poetry retreat, which was awesome and enlightening; drew some logos for friends’ ventures and events, which was refreshing; and did some beta reading for internet strangers – a queer teen romance and an adult fantasy! I also went ham at the day job.

But the time of rest is over! Now is the time of doing once more! Or, the time of despairing and procrastinating and staring wistfully at walls as a single tear slides down my cheek! Either/or!

I originally intended to get my beta draft out to readers by the end of June, on the assumption that my immaculately planned book couldn’t possibly need the same sort of sweeping changes or rewrite that caused me to abandon my last project. It was supposed to need some tightening up, maybe removing a scene here or there, merging a couple of characters who don’t serve enough purpose, that sort of thing.

But yeah, I sat back after the read-through, overall pretty pleased with my work, and made a list of changes:

• Replace family situation with a new more dynamic and relatable one; create a sense of identity for the protagonist’s home community, and ways that affects the character’s decisions through the book
• Remove the character who sets off the inciting incident and doesn’t appear in the book again until the end + give the inciting incident to another more important character, which means changing the nature of said inciting incident
• Move the events of the book to another nearby location with more interest and relevance to the theme than ‘generic forest’
• Add an obstacle relating to the theme on the journey there
• Merge and remove a bunch of characters from the middle of the book, who all serve the same or similar purpose
• Change up some repetitive events in the middle of the book, so it feels like it’s always evolving and the pressure grows
• Make the current failed attempt to succeed the new climax, remove current ending, make new ending and new failed attempt to succeed
• Give main character more voice through every scene, so her identity comes through clearer
• Update midpoint so she has a clearer but still flawed understanding of her goal

…

Then I dropped my head into my hands. To turn this book from being ok to being good – or getting closer to good – I have to REWRITE THE ENTIRE THING. Even though the overall plot and character are essentially the same? Somehow?? I flicked through the pages, desperate to find a chapter, a scene, a sentence, anything, that I don’t need to delete to make way for the new improved book.

Nope.

So I procrastinated for a few weeks, worrying: if I get to the end of this draft, am I just going to find the same thing again? Peeling the next layer of onion-mistakes only reveals the fresh ones I’ve yet to learn? Am I going to need to rewrite it again, to learn new lessons, on and on forever? (yes.) How does anyone get published at all?

My goal felt – feels – a million years away. I know logically that I’m closer to it, after writing 3 books in 18 months, swallowing humble pie with each project in order to learn the next set of lessons, but at the same time I feel no closer at all. I’m back at square one, staring at a book outline with my hands hovering over the keyboard.

Every time I read the new outline, I get excited. Then I remember how excited I was about the last outline, and I put it down, and pace, and watch youtube videos, and stare out the window, and doodle…

I am doomed to fail over and over and over again.

And I know that so long as I keep learning from my mistakes, inevitably the hard work will pay off… But that’s not much comfort right now, in the middle bit, when I’ve spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours writing in the evenings after work, only to find myself back at Chapter 1.

So… what am I gonna do about it?

When I look back at the weaknesses of the book, I can’t in good conscience claim I didn’t know they’d be there when I outlined and zero-drafted the book. There are a lot of scenes, especially towards the end, where my notes went along the lines of “introspects her way into doing this thing that is against how she’s acted until now”. Problems I told myself I’d be able to sort out or gloss over by simply writing them well. But I’d get to those scenes while writing the proper draft, and get stuck, and have to just sew something together that’d work ‘for now’, again pushing it back for editor me to fix later.

So I guess my plan to prevent myself from doing that a second time, is to go more Plotter than I have ever Plotter’d before.

I am currently working through the zero draft for draft two. The two-zero draft? The zero-two? Anyway, I am writing it in more detail than the last time, and not leaving myself any questions to answer later. Then, once I’m done I will set it aside for a few weeks and come back to it, and make edits before I start working on the first draft.

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What’s a zero draft?

Sorry, just realised you might not know. Some people call it the ‘puke draft’, or lots of different things. It’s when you have a scene or story to tell, and you just want to get the series of events out in your own words, before writing it in real book speak. They’re not like scene outlines, which are structured, more like throwing paint at a canvas to make the vague forms of the things you want to paint on it later, to make sure the composition and colour dynamics are ok before you start.

Everyone writes them differently, but for me they look like this:

Neth doesn't acknowledge being late, or that Adlas clearly had to fetch her. : Welcome bla bla, to the first event of the Festival of Song. I hope you slept well, contestants! By dawn tomorrow we will have our winner - if anyone makes it through the night, that is. Format format, four contestant events with the bardic show in the middle. Every year, the contest has a different focus - on music or song, on stories or rhyme, on the free or caged forms, tradition or innovation! I promised a festival that would make even the strongest of hearts quiver, so without further ado, I will announce this year's focus…
Waves at the skeleton, who taps its hands against its thigh bones to make a clattering drumroll sound.
Neth: the Forms of Harmony!
Rhith thinking, what are the forms of harmony? Form as in the shape? Harmonic shapes? Looks left and right at the two groups - the group of contestants including Melid are all groaning and despair, while the other group are like her, confused, asking one another in whispers what that means.

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It’s a lot easier to edit, delete and tweak a story without all the book-voice in the way. I don’t get attached to a nice sentence I wrote, or distracted by line edits I don’t need to be making yet. I can change the setting, the character voice and introspection notes, without feeling sad or annoyed that I’m deleting something that took me 5 hours to write. I write 700-1000 words of zero draft in half an hour, so what does it matter if I later have to change it?

So yeah, what I’m going to do is take the process I was already sort-of following, and follow it more precisely. Oh, and I made scene outlines before this too. So each zero draft is built from a scene outline that has a goal, an inciting incident, a challenge and an ending. Every scene has a start and end point that I think will be strong, but will check in the zero draft when it’s done.

Anyway, long post just to say that I have moped for two months, but am now back on the horse and trotting along.

I’m probably going to fail again, and that’s not okay – but it’s a fact, regardless. At the end of the day, if I want to become a prolific, successful traditionally published writer in the next ten years, I’m going to need really super refined processes to push out a book I’m proud of at least once a year. Better to refine those processes now, than when I have people waiting for a book later.

And no, I am not going to slide on my goal. The timeline for 2024 might need revising, but I am going to get where I want to be. Even if I’m doomed to fail over and over, so long as I keep going, I am also bound to succeed. Probably. One day.

And as Ursula K. Le Guin once said in an interview: “Shoot for the top, always. You know you’ll never make it, but what’s the fun if you don’t shoot for the top?”