Finish The First Draft

And so, I was writing to a deadline last week. And by last week, I mean I started writing at 7pm on Saturday and was still writing at 3.30 am on Sunday morning.

I went up for NYC Midnight again this year, and this time I even liked my writing prompt.

My writing week stretched before me like sun in The Bahamas.

Hint: I’ve never actually been to The Bahamas.

But I have written short stories before. Not a lot recently. But I wanted to try again.

And I found out about NYC Midnight’s short story thing less than a day before registration closed.

The next day I sat on my email, obsessively checking until my prompt came through. Genre, subject, character. My new best friends for the week.

I got one thing I could work with. And another thing I could work with. The third thing I needed to make not cliche and therefore depressing.

I suppose I could have gone depressing, but I wanted to be different. I just wasn’t sure how.

The day the prompt came through, I didn’t write. In my head, I had more hours than everyone else, because of the time difference.

I wrote the deadline on my actual calendar.

And I read a book. I watched TV. Wrote a few lines, told myself it was ‘thinking time’.

Every night when the kid went to bed, I asked Neil to make me a coffee. Opened a document, stared at it. Wrote a few lines. Did some laps around the house, tested lines of dialog on the fish in the living room. They’d heard better.

See, I have issues. Issues around finishing projects with time to spare, issues around writing amongst clutter, when the washing machine is on and some stupid thing with a zipper is banging the drum.

Also, I have this irrational fear of bad writing. And if I read my words aloud and they sound like crap, they don’t go anywhere. This stupid fear is probably the reason why I’m not a novelist yet. Because I would actually have to y’know, finish the shitty first draft.

I haven’t written fiction in a long time, but I used to be good at it, used to finish short stories, with a few that turned into half-written novels.

I say half-written, because I’ve never completed a draft of something that isn’t a short story, or a poem, a business article, or a blog post.

And the thing with my blog posts is, I write on the screen, and if Neil laughs at it or gives me a hug at the end, I hit ‘publish’. That’s it.

It just kinda happens.

I’ve stopped letting fiction happen. And for someone who wants to write novels, that kinda sucks.

I thought that writing to the competition prompt would fire up my fiction brain again.

I got a hook for the story at dinner on Saturday night. I wrote three angles, and picked one. I fired up my laptop in the office.

Isla threw me a purple pen, Neil made me coffee, and put some peanut butter cups on the side. They backed away slowly.

And they closed the door behind them, you guys. They closed the door.

As for me, I wrote. I really did. It helped that I had my best writing friend writing to the same deadline, and there were pep talks back and forth. Pep talks and actual writing.

I wrote flat out until I heard my best beta reader snoring through the wall. I wrote with a windstorm in the background, and without Judge Judy.

I wrote paragraph, by paragraph.

I typed in our chat window, too.

This is not bad.

and then

THIS IS SHIT.

I went to the kitchen and looked for snacks in the dark.

It was just me in the cheese doodles when the windstorm knocked the power out.

Regular readers may remember the last time the power went out. That time was more fun.

Last week, I wrote until it came back on. Six sprints. Such was our dance. I talked nicely and then not so nicely to Frank the Laptop.

I literally cursed the winds.

I also cursed myself for not starting earlier. I had all week and here I was, counting the minutes. I could have opened the story more. I could have followed that weird tangent, if this was the shitty first draft.

But this would be the only draft, and I had seventeen minutes left.

I wrote some more. I gave up, for a while. Probably seven seconds. 

I typed to my friend in the chat window. I’M BACK.

The story could have gone two ways. It could have gone on forever, or THE END.

That didn’t tie up, and neither did that, but stories don’t have to be neat.

However.

This story had to contain three elements. The third, and most complicated for me, I hadn’t introduced yet.

I wrote a clumsy first draft kinda sentence.

My already slow typing was a drip.

And then. 

Reconnecting…

unable to reconnect.

You can still work while offline.

Yes, you can work. But you cannot submit that work.

I had 8 days. I wrote for eight hours.

I went to bed and cried myself to sleep. I did not make the deadline. I didn’t throw the laptop out the window.

Because now, I have a first draft I should finish. 

And that’s something.