When I was writing short stories, I knew intimately where I was in different drafts. Am I just figuring things out? Have I gotten the story down, but now I need to move chunks around and find the magical orientation that will make the work sing? Has everything clicked and now I need to smooth the rough edges, comb out the knots, bring the organic and authentic to the surface? Or is everything done save for a nice strong finish, polishing words, clipping scenes, and finishing the ending?

I could easily go through ten or 20 drafts this way, circling deeper and deeper to the heart of the story. It’s why I never fathomed how people could write novels. I always wrote my way through stories—I didn’t plot, I felt my way through, moving things around until they clicked. You’d be six or seven years in with a novel if you tried to do that much fiddling.

There’s a certain amount of surrender I had to grow into to write novels, and a certain level of imperfection I had to get comfortable with, and a certain amount of faith I’ve had to embrace. With my short stories, I was fixing everything all the time—voice, pacing, structure, plot, characters, dialogue, EVERYTHING was up for adjustment in every draft.

Now I have developed a process for novel writing that carries me through the same levels my tons of drafts of short stories did. Admittedly, the text isn’t getting the same amount of attention, every word isn’t getting considered millions of times, but I am still using my instinct and intuition to guide me through—I just have a bit more structure to the process.

I had a novel I was working on what felt like FOREVER to me. FOREVER. I did a fourth draft and thought it was ready to share, but as soon as I started sharing it, I knew I was wrong. I paid an editor to give me feedback at a certain point. I read through her notes and I could see—a-ha, this books is at a third draft level. Which is the draft where the text comes together, things click and it’s time to start working on craft.

The nature of each draft is so distinct and so different. Learning the movements of novel writing is helping me to pace myself and to keep my sanity, knowing that the drafts feel different. Some drafts require more faith, others more precision. It just depends on which draft I’m on and what my goal is.

The first draft requires both focus and surrender. You are building something from nothing and that is plenty of work. In a sense, it’s the lowest stakes because everything can change. I often get through this draft by telling myself I can be awful because I can fix it all later. But the first draft also has very high stakes because this is when you find out if the novel you imagined has legs. If it fails at this point, there is much much more work to do.

The next draft for me is the hardest. It’s the revision. I’m now taking a lumpy mess and assessing it through the lens of analysis. Is it fitting together? What did I miss? When I add the missing chunks, what do I have to change to create alignment. It almost feels physical: moving segments around, writing new chapters, and adjusting the old text to create alignment. It involves a lot of heavy thinking and re-plotting. It feels like lots of labor.

I just finished revisions on my current manuscript. (Let the angels sing!) Now I’m on draft three: editing, editing, editing. This is my wheelhouse and happy place. Maybe because I like puzzles. It’s like intuitive problem solving. You move through the manuscript like a panther or an eagle, staring the scenes down, looking for the faults and blockages, the openings and synchronicities, so you can bridge gaps, tease out characters’ unique personalities, smooth transitions, and make the space for the book’s identity come alive.

With each draft you learn your world better, your characters better, and get a better sixth sense for the story you are telling. There’s still quite a bit of work involved, but it’s like I have a sense of it now, it’s not anything could happen—it’s , there is a right answer here and if I focus hard enough, I make myself attuned to the words on the page and the possibilities in the souls of the characters, I can make this novel soar.

Onward in faith,

K.