I Wrote a Book

It's official. I wrote my first novel. As of right now, it's still a steaming pile of poop (I'm a parent now...I have to watch my language), but there's potential there. I'm supposed to have a final draft done within the next month to complete my MFA, so here's to spending every waking moment editing, revising and rereading this thing. I may want to kill my protagonist by the end of it.

The experience has taught me a lot, like to plan ahead, dammit. I spent the first 1.5 years of my masters writing the first half of the book and hating every second of it. The past six months have been spent revising that half, and figuring out what the hell was next (and wishing I had figured it out sooner). I always fancied myself as the sort of person who has to write it in order to know what I'm writing about. I still think that's true, but now I know how to harness that power. I can't stop writing until the draft is done, otherwise I get bogged down in the details of scenes that I'll likely delete later anyways.

I've also learned to kill your darlings. I know, I know, the phrase is cliche nowadays. But it's true. I deleted over 40,000 words. That's half a novel gone. And my manuscript is so much better served for it. I'm not going to lie, I cried with each stroke of the backspace key, but it was so worth it.

Finally, I learned that I can do this. Fuck yeah! (the little one is asleep...I can swear sometimes). I WROTE A FUCKING NOVEL. Now I need to actually make it a good novel. That's a whole different post...