So what are the steps I have already taken, and how have I gone about taking them?
My process is slightly antiquated, in that I find it significantly easier to dodge distractions and not get side-tracked when I am physically writing (mechanical) pencil-to-paper. For that, I use a Pentel Orenznero mechanical pencil that automatically dispenses 0.5mm pencil lead. This is about the only luxurious piece that I work with, just to save myself the time of click-clicking out more lead.
Every morning, for the last 46 days, I have gotten up at 4:30 to write for about an hour before I shower and go to work. Most days, I could cover about six small notebook pages in this time, with an average of 130 words per page (less when the writing was dialogue-heavy). This made for a gratifying ~780 words per day. Not quite Stephen King levels, but this was the vomit draft, and getting down its structure was all that mattered.
I just managed to fill my first 250 page notebook (244 pages, 6 weren’t even deserving of the vomit draft), leaving my current draft at an estimated 31,000 words, and it is just short of the last arc of the story. I want the completed story to ideally rest in the 80,000 to 90,000 word range, so how does this draft shake out?
Well, I’m giving myself the benefit of the doubt here, despite the online discourse seeming to agree that a ‘vomit draft’ is to be cut down later, because mine is almost entirely plot points, and has changed a lot over the course of writing. I mean, the whole story started out as me experimenting with a story about a real-world McGuffin, and only in the last 5,000 words did I totally remove the McGuffin from the plot! Honestly, these ‘vomit drafts’ are almost exclusively exploratory writing for myself, seeing what different characters will do, why, and what results from it. This quick draft has therefore served its purpose well, and will be the wire skeleton I apply clay to from now on.
So what happens next?
I’ve spent a lot of my spare time in this past month researching what application I should use while I’m digitizing my writing, and I have settled on the free software, Obsidian. Not only do I appreciate the easy plugin capability supported heavily by the community, but I really like it using markdown files as a default for quick and compact loading, making my files easy to backup and save all over the place without worrying about them taking up terabytes of data and requiring long load times when jumping between chapters. I was going to say my only gripe was that I would have to transfer the notes to word eventually, and markdown files don’t allow for indents to be used in your notes. That would mean I have to apply those myself, but low and behold theres an export plugin for that as well. The only other complaint I can have is that I have a lot to learn about the software!
From here, I’ll be transcribing my quick vomit draft into Obsidian. This will serve as a large scale correction of plot and reinforcing of character personality, i.e. removing the McGuffin completely and rewriting the portions that had it involved, and actually making my cardboard stand-ins for people care about whats going on. I’ve already started rewriting the first chapter, and have put myself at ease about being cliché with these characters for now, until I have them ironed out. If I don’t know entirely how they would act, it’s totally fine for them to act in the expected way rather than not at all! Ideally, this draft will finish the chunk of marble from which I can carve the slimmer story.
I will be back with updates on how this process is working for me and any improvements I have made, along with word counts for what I have transcribed (which is easier digitally compared to my handwriting estimates) in the future. I also plan to be writing about my character creation process and plotting methods soon, so look forward to those!
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