Until it exists

We begin with rows of boxes

Bridges over the River Wey

Last week it was 100 days until the end of the year.

For those 100 days I have set myself a challenge to finish the first draft of my novel. This is not a draft that anyone will see, ever. It is the spewing of ideas into pages that will hopefully begin to take the shape of a story. As Annie Lamott calls it: “the shitty first draft.“ 

To keep myself on track, I signed up for an extra hour of writing with the London Writers Salon each weekday with the hope of knocking out that shitty first draft by the end of December.

To imagine a number of anything, including time, I need to visualise the extent or the volume of it. Descriptive words don’t work (oh yes indeed, I get the irony). So, this is what 100 days of little squares looks like:

After looking at that big block of squares I realised that I still needed to think more in “weeks” if I was going to try to accomplish my goals during this period of time, and therefore I needed week-sized ROWS of boxes so I could tick off one each day. Obviously I spent maybe too much time took on the delightful task of picking out a sturdy piece of card, finding a lovely pen, counting out the distance across and down and dividing by the right numbers to draw the lines for seven days a week across and 13 weeks (+ a few days) down the length. It only took two tries to get it right. The actual version looks quite a bit messier than this, but you get the idea:

Each day that I complete the extra hour, I get to cross off one of the boxes on my rows of weeks until the end of the year. I LOVE getting to cross off those days. X=😎

I learnt that the only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you’ll finish it, even if in the beginning you think you can’t do it at all.

— Langston Hughes, The Big Sea

The idea for this story has been percolating in my head for awhile, and at first I wrote a few short essays thinking that would trick me into writing more. But I found I was instead spending a lot more time on these weekly Substack posts, and was not really focusing on the novel. More drastic measures were needed. The 100-days challenge presented itself so I signed myself up before thinking twice: what did I have to lose? I love a good trick played on my own willing conscious; don’t you? It’s a self-imposed deadline with no consequences, but it’s a deadline nonetheless!

Rows of Post Office Boxes

I have numerous parts of what will turn into chapters already written, and now I am trying to link them together. The characters are starting to become real, and are getting to know each other. I am describing the setting as distinctly as I can. There are [HUGE] gaps in the plot which I’m hoping will find their way to a place I haven’t imagined yet. I need more actual scenes and to figure out how to translate the ideas and emotions in my head into words that will make sense to anyone else. There is a lot of work to be done before I even get to the actual craft of making the writing itself better.

The way to do a piece of writing is three or four times over, never once. For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something—anything—out in front of me. Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything—as a first draft. With that, you have achieved a sort of nucleus. Then, as you work it over and alter it, you begin to shape sentences that score higher with the ear and eye. Edit it again—top to bottom. The chances are that about now you’ll be seeing something that you are sort of eager for others to see. And all that takes time. What I have left out is the interstitial time. You finish that first awful blurting, and then you put the thing aside. You get in your car and drive home. On the way, your mind is still knitting at the words. You think of a better way to say something, a good phrase to correct a certain problem. Without the drafted version—if it did not exist—you obviously would not be thinking of things that would improve it. In short, you may be actually writing only two or three hours a day, but your mind, in one way or another, is working on it twenty-four hours a day—yes, while you sleep—but only if some sort of draft or earlier version already exists. Until it exists, writing has not really begun.

John McPhee, Draft No. 4

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Fortunately, this story keeps drawing me back to tell it, and I realise that I have to get it out of my head, first of all. Afterwards, as John McPhee says, I can work on it some more, and worry about making it good and possibly something that others will want to read too. But most importantly, for now I am really enjoying finding the new rhythm in my days that allows the characters to emerge.

Saying out loud that I am doing this is part of my self-imposed accountability too, so I will keep you posted. And maybe, much later on, there may be more about these characters for you to read! Meantime, thank you for allowing me the space to declare my intentions publicly!

Pelicans on their way

Thanks for reading this week! Do have tricks to get things done that are hard for you? Do you have inspirational quotations that help you get motivated? I’d love to hear what works-I can only trick myself the same way so many times…:)

Happy October and see you next week!

xoxo Sabrina

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