(My second historical novel took 9 months planning and 9 months writing, I believe. The writing of the first draft took 3 months, the revision 3 months. In retrospect, the longest part of my process then was getting the idea right, the premise, which took me 5 months from February to July, a process we fast track with the Classic course at The Novelry. You can see the original opening line has been pushed down. By November I had completed the first draft and the opening page read like this (right-hand side) and was pretty much the same with the obvious change to British English wording: The Twin Towers came down in September, visible from our home, and that was a time of great worry and distress both locally and of course internationally. The opening page in July read like this (see left-hand side). I pitched to agents in the UK in February 2002. I did pitch to Miriam Goderich, but I don’t think I heard back or else it must have been one of what I’d come to dub ‘my pretty rejections’. I love the heavy cadence of the verses of The Bible and have read the New Testament a number of times with pleasure. I extended the reading list to Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter and relied on that book heavily later, comparing page by page, noting how and where and why I fell short. I can’t recall reading Amis at all, though I enjoyed his memoir, and I think I may have added that to try to bring some modern ‘grit’ to the storytelling. But as you’ll see as the birth neared, I got busier. The time frame for writing took into account the November due date. Here I set out to write 40k.įunnily enough, this new fifth novel of mine came in at 48k at first draft and will be about 70k when I submit. What has come as a big surprise to me, reviewing the evidence, as for some reason I had assumed all my re-drafts were contractions, is that I always intended to expand it. I set myself a routine and a process, which won’t come as a surprise to writers of The Novelry. The line that became the opening sentence emerged through a process of ‘cut and paste’ – to find what the hell this book was about, and where to drop in hard and fast. Jonathon Myerson, who reviewed the book for The Independent, hated the published title, but he and his wife Julie who reviewed it for The Guardian, loved the opening line. I must have felt at some point the latter was a bit too on the nose. The working title for what was to become Becoming Strangers was The Last Resort. This was what I set down in July when I began: I had a premise which started out as pretty hokey in February 2001, but by July I’d been turning it around in my mind for a few months. I was heavily pregnant (due November) and had two boys under 5 at home in Brooklyn. I had two in the drawer and I meant business. It was 19 years ago this month, July, that I set about writing my ‘proper’ first novel. But if you’re curious about how a rough draft has transformed for some of The Novelry’s own writers, we’ve got a few examples of the difference between first and complete draft for you to peruse!Īs I entered into the fourth draft of my current novel, set in Brooklyn where I lived happily for a few years at the turn of the century, I turned back to console myself that the redrafting process was ever the same, even in the glory days and checked my process for my first novel. Of course, the process is different for each writer, and indeed each book. But in the beginning, lots of writers have questions about just how different this initial draft will be from their second draft, fourth draft and – ultimately – final draft. They’re where a writer can work her ideas out, test out words, find answers, link scenes and get acquainted with their cast. Rough drafts, then, have huge value to the writing process. After a rough draft, we can also often find and fill plot holes, and answer questions that even we have as the writers. Often, getting your first attempt down on paper is a great way to uncover more detail about your characters so that when you’re writing your second draft, you truly know them. Even the difference between the first and second drafts is momentous, with characters changing genders, ages, or even disappearing altogether. The writing process can feel like a long one when you’re working on your rough draft, the final draft of a manuscript seems almost unfathomable.
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