Eight drafts!

During the 12 Days of Page Turners online event, the host, Aimee Ravichandran (@aimeeravichandran) of Abundantly Social, asked me how long it took to write SPARK. I told her that I thought it took about a year to finish the first draft.

There were eight drafts before it was done.

So, having just finished my first draft of Book 2: Fire, I decided to do some forensic snooping through my files to get a sense of how long Fire took. Again, my estimate was a year. Apparently, that’s my go-to answer for all writing projects. Technical report for work? About a year. War and Peace? About a year.

Turns out that my first outline for the book I had tentatively titled War Janne, was written on January 19, 2020. So, it’s closer to two years from first concept to end of first draft. I had some ideas before then but wanted to sell SPARK before I spent much time on them. I signed the contract with Inklings in early 2020, so those tie together. I didn’t save a draft manuscript until October, 2020. This time it was because I was busy with SPARK revisions and didn’t want to write much of War Janne (now Fire), until I knew what was going to be in the final version of SPARK. First draft file save to first draft complete was fourteen months. Hey, maybe that “a year” estimate isn’t so far off.

Should have been faster. Here’s what I blame it on: Covid, getting laid off, moving, finding a new job, family tragedy, getting really sick for a bit (non-Covid), El Nino, the Astros losing the World Series, not feeling like writing at times, and gender terminology.

I’m not joking. I lost about a month during my consternation regarding how to refer to those with two X chromosomes. Could I call someone a lady? (only in restricted circumstances) Girl? (only if age appropriate) Gal? (nope, delete this from your lexicon) Woman? (offensive to some because it contains “man” within the word) It was exhausting, plus, I’d already stricken “bitches” and “hoes.”

None of you will ever see Draft 1. It was written following the mantra “write fast, don’t worry about it being bad or wrong.” It does contain several instances and variations of “womyn.”

I gave up and went back to boy, girl, man, woman, male, female. If the Chicago Manual of Style ever addresses this issue, I’ll follow their guidance.

The next roadblock was where to end the book. Now that I know it’s a trilogy, where does Fire end and Ash begin? I thought I knew. About 300 pages in, I realized that I had another 100 pages to get to that point. With revisions, that would grow to a book of about 450-500 pages. Probably too long for this genre. My characters were also irritating me.

Will and Feral had gotten into a fight. They went separate ways to deal with it. Bad things started to happen and suddenly Fire ended in a cliffhanger.

That means that Book 3: Ash better get started soon.

Questions for you:

  1. Does it bother you when a mid-series book ends in a cliffhanger?
  2. Does anyone know a good developmental editor? The one Inklings used for SPARK has left to pursue other interests.