Thoughts On The End Of A Draft

Approximately ten minutes ago, I wrote the 102,993rd word of the current draft of my novel, and then I stopped writing. I had reached the end of the last planned scene. It was done. The second full rewrite of my novel is finished!

The Writing Process: A Guide For Non-Writers - Part Three

So by now we've gotten to the point in the writing process where you’ve written a book. Congratulations! But your work is far from done.

I feel like people with no writing experience see this as the end point. You’ve written a first draft, therefore you’ve written a book, right? What people forget is that things hardly ever turn out right first time. If you read Part Two of my writing process series (discussing the writing of the first draft), you’ll understand the extent of this and the reasoning behind it. Even if you outlined your book in great detail, there is no guarantee that you won’t change things halfway through, or that you will be happy with the book that your outline produced. And of course, it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll be happy with the actual writing. Every writer has their flaws: some of us ‘underwrite’, some of us ‘overwrite’, and we all have words and phrases that we use far too often. The first draft is just a foundation for all the good things to come later, and it may need fixing before you can even do that.

So once you’ve finished your first draft, it’s time to edit. 

The Writing Process: A Guide for Non-Writers - Part Two

In my last blog post, I talked about preparing to write a book, which is the first part of the writing process. You can find it here. Today, I'll be continuing with the next stage of the writing process: writing the first draft. This, I’m sure, is the bit non-writers think of when we say we’re writing a book. The bit where we sit down at our desks with huge smiles on our faces and a coffee by our side, and just let the words pour out of us. We’re excited about this idea and this story, and everything from the overarching plot down to every last comma is perfectly aligned in our heads. Now we just need to write it all down, then it'll be ready for the world to read and love! 

Sounds too good to be true, right? That’s because it is. Although writing the first draft may be the least complicated part – the only step to it is “sit your butt down and WRITE DAMMIT” – that does not mean it is easy. A writer faces many challenges while writing the first draft. Many writers quit at this point.

The Writing Process: A Guide For Non-Writers – Part One

I recently came across the image below, detailing things that writers hate hearing people say to them. It reminded me of some other things that I’ve known people say to writers – things like “Hurry up writing!”, which naturally goes hand-in-hand with point three, and “Can I read your book?” as if it isn’t a very personal thing that I haven’t even shown to my closest friends and family yet (I wrote a full blog post about that a while ago).

It occurred to me that the reason people say things like this is because they have misconceptions about what writing a book actually involves. So rather than just reminding people that writers find being told these things incredibly annoying, I thought I’d write a bit about what novel writers actually do. Hopefully this should help people understand that writing a book is ridiculously time-consuming and difficult, and even more so to do it well. Then you can go forth into the world safe in the knowledge that you’re not going to offend your writer friends, and can actively support them!

Ice Massacre: Book Review

Ice Massacre by Tiana Warner is the first in the Mermaids of Eriana Kwai trilogy. It centres around eighteen-year-old Meela, a native of the remote Pacific island of Eriana Kwai. For all of Meela’s life, and longer, the island has been plagued by vicious mermaid attacks that are slowly killing the island’s people. In response, the islanders started sending out warriors on Massacres every year in the hopes of culling the mermaid population enough for them to be able to finally resume fishing. But in recent years, less and less men have been returning from the Massacres, instead falling prey to the mermaids’ allure, and the island is falling further and further into poverty.

Finally, the islanders decide to try a new tactic: send women, less susceptible to the mermaid’s allure, instead. And so, after five years of training, Meela and nineteen other girls set out with the promise of glory and honour – but without the promise of any of them even returning home alive. But for Meela, the Massacre isn’t just about saving her people from starvation. It’s also about Lysi – the mermaid she saved and befriended when she was ten, and what happened to ruin their seemingly unbreakable friendship.