I started writing my first novel1 when my daughter was a newborn. I had an entire year to do it (because Canada). I had all the time in the world. The wrestle was real, though. I’ve always been a panster, and I took that pantsing approach to writing a novel. By the time I finished all 4 drafts of said novel, I was walking my daughter to kindergarten every day.
Five fucking years.
I queried it for a year. Agent feedback was always good, but I never managed to hook one. I did end up getting a request to rewrite and resubmit the novel from a promising agent. I worked hard for three months, hoping to get things right. I was going to impress. I was going to awe. I was going to write the next fucking Gone Girl, dammit.
And then I got rejected. I’ve written about the butthurt I felt after the R&R rejection numerous times, including in the introduction of my upcoming short story collection. It took a year of writing short fiction in a different genre to get over my butthurt, but hey, Ending in Ashes will be with you all in just over a month, and the advance reviews are coming in hot and positive.
Five fucking years, though.
I’ve seen other writers proclaim how long it took them to write some of their novels. Ten years. Twenty years. There is no perfect amount of time to write a novel. Looking back, however, I feel like writing a FIRST novel shouldn’t be a decade-long endeavor, because it’s almost guaranteed to become a failure.
Because there’s a learning curb to it. It’s an art. It takes a while to perfect. Why sacrifice all your dreams on a “first novel”. All those grandiose hopes and dreams of being the next Gillian Flynn really made for an unstable foundation.
One of my writer pals,
recently wrote about her experience as a plotter. I can’t help but admire her organization because when it comes to organizing thoughts and plots and arcs, I just zone right out. Writing for me has always been a bit of a chaotic adventure, but taking the “pantsing approach” to novel writing did not pan out.Writing a novel DOES require at least some planning. You know, unless you want to take five fucking years to write the damn thing.
FIVE FUCKING YEARS, though I try to forgive myself because I did have two kids and had to reorganize my entire fucking being around being a half-decent mother to said kids. The kids threw a bit of a wrench into my writing career, but now I write a lot about being a mom.
I’m currently working on the third draft of my second novel, Mommy Complex.
Writing it has been a VERY pleasant experience thus far, considering that I wrote the first draft on a whim during Nanowrimo 2022. I went in with a vague arc for each act and the vow to churn out the novella in a month.
I made three Scrivener folders, one for each act. Each act had a plot, a character arc for my protagonist and antagonist, and that was about it. No B-plots or anything. I planned as I wrote, shoving brainstormed scenes into an unsorted folder for each act that I would deal with later.
The second draft took a few months to work through. I sorted through each UNSORTED ACT folder, arranged the scenes where they needed to be, and filed away some new unsorted scenes with B-plots as I uncovered them with my quickly evolving side characters. By the end of it, I had a novel with proper foundation and a plot that was reasonably structured.
Now I’m on the third draft and I feel as though I’ve cemented a writing process that actually works for me. This process allowed me to plan as I wrote, rearranging scenes into what became a “real-time snowflake method” of writing. I’m writing the house, perfecting prose, painting the walls of the house wherein my seemingly happy suburban white family is going to get murdered.
Some other things I do now:
I write while high because it keeps my perfectionism down. I originally planned on doing it on the first and second drafts, but there are still portions of the third draft that need expanding. Writing while high just keeps me focused on the need to get all my thoughts out. Fortunately, I’ve trained my brain to stop hating what appears on the page, and I find myself soberly churning out thoughts without judgement.
I jot down every thought that comes to me. My notes app is full of rapid-fire thoughts. Lines of dialogue. Plot points. Ideas for sequels. None of it needs to be legible. If it matters, I’ll remember what I was telling myself. If it mattered, I'd be able to decipher every typo. It's like scrapbooking. Chaotic organization. Sorting the mental doom box that was my story idea. Giving it life.
I took breaks. Life’s been difficult as of late. Taking time away from writing to deal with stuff also inspires me. Because if I grow as a person, I’m also going to grow as a writer. I also watched a lot of YouTube during my late nights and I have no shame in doing so.
Maybe over time, I’ll need fewer distractions, but for now, I’m actually writing a novel that’ll for sure be done from first draft to completion in under a year.
Under a fucking year, bitches.
I did write two novels in high school but they were basically Wattpad-esque fan fiction stories wherein I would cast the lead singer of 90’s Canadian alt-rock band, Serial Joe, in a weird summer camp murder story. He was, of course, the murderer. I was, of course, the final girl. But TWIST, it’s a love story!
I’m so excited 🙌🏽
I'm a pantster and regret it every time I get to the edits 😂