5 Things My First Novel Draft Taught Me

Sometimes, I deny to myself that I even finished my first draft. That's because my first draft still does not at all resemble a finished book.

It's sad to me sometimes that I can't celebrate my own success. I can't even feel good within myself for completing a major milestone. No matter how much I do I still see the winding trail in front of me.

In saying that, completing your first draft of a novel means you're one step closer to the goal of a finished novel. I often oscillate between relishing the writing process as an unpublished author (with no outside pressure! yay!) and mounting more pressure on myself for not succeeding sooner. It's a game of the mind but thankfully over the past few years I've learned to quiet my mind and shut down my perfectionistic tendencies.

That leads me to the first lesson.

1. It's ok not to have it all in place yet

I wish someone had told me that the first draft of your novel won't feel finished. I remember sending a message to my fellow writing friend, Isla asking her if I had finished my first draft when I got to the end of the story (no joke).

I thought when I had finished my first draft I would feel different. I thought my story would suddenly make more sense and I would have a better understanding of how to edit it.

I realize now that writing a first draft is just one step in the process. Writing a book takes many drafts, many refinements, done over time. It probably won't be until my fifth edit that it begins to feel like a book, and that's ok.

2. It may take longer than you think

I don't know if you already know this, but I spent 5 years writing and researching my current novel. For the first two years, I was writing random snippets of the series I want to write, and then I decided "OK I should probably actually start writing the first novel now." To date I'm so incredibly glad I decided to do that.

If I look back, I realize that it probably would have been even better to have started sooner. That's the strange thing, no matter how ill-prepared you feel, you will never regret starting when you did.

For this reason, I try not to think about when the novel will be done but instead focus on what I can do each day to move closer to finishing it.

For me that looks like setting a timer and focusing during that time. When the timer is up, I stop. I learned it's better to have a consistent chain of days writing than it is to write for 5 hours one day and then do nothing for the rest of the week. Making the time to write is crucial to getting your first rough draft done.

3. It doesn't matter how long your first draft is

Hear me out. Whenever writers think about whether their first draft is done, they inevitably come up with quantitative questions like: how long should a first draft of a novel be? or what should be the word count of a first draft? I discovered after finishing my first draft that those metrics don't matter.

That's because your first draft only has to have all the elements of your story. Parts will still be missing, sure, but ideally you should have all the components like the main and subplot, characters, character arcs, supporting characters, etc. It should have a clear start, middle, end, but other than that everything else really doesn't matter.

Your word count will change in the editing phase, the finer details of the plot will also shift and get worked out. Everything in your first draft will change, that's the point of a first draft. You're giving yourself something to edit so that you can have a book in the future.

I learned that bringing your first draft into existence means that it doesn't have to be a perfectly edited first draft yet.

4. Your A and B plots probably won't make sense yet

One of my biggest anxieties is how I will make my A and B plots work. Really. It keeps me awake at night thinking about how the character's different perspectives will somehow make a cohesive story that isn't hard to follow. Fear about your plot holes is a real problem.

But through this process of the first draft I realized that actually, I don't need to have that figured out yet. I can be in the process of figuring it out, finding and collecting all the pieces of the puzzle for future Claudia to arrange.

For now, I can still have fun dreaming up what the characters will do and how they will react to each other's plot points. Yes, plot holes still need to be filled and character paths still need to be joined up, but that's part of the process.

I'm really trying not to rob myself of that fun by worrying about something that will sort itself out in the future.

5. Sensitivity brings creativity

I thought all my life that being sensitive made my life harder. People that feel emotion deeply often don't have the easiest time in our modern world, yet sensitive people are often the most creative.

I learned throughout this whole writing process that the ability to surrender to sensitivity brought out some of my most creative moments. Whenever I felt something so deeply I couldn't even leave the house, I would write and suddenly I had a whole fleshed-out scene and a somewhat better mental state.

It still isn't easy to write when I feel my most sensitive, but it helps. Sensitivity really helps you to get into the minds and hearts of your characters. It gives you a raw empathy that helps people connect to the humans you're crafting in your story.