Into the First Draft

I started the first draft way later than I planned. Without my February Creative Writing challenge, I have a feeling I would’ve start even later.

By later, I mean I started… one day before the end of the month.

There’s a bit less romantic snowfalls now, you know the kind rom-com movies can never get right.

Spring is waving from far, snow is melting, turning brown with all the gross abrasives stuff. It’s slushy, icy, still cold.

We’re not in winter wonderland anymore!

What Took You So Long ?

I started a new thing this February: a therapy.

Once a week, I see a psychologist. It got that bad.

I couldn’t shake off the anger, the yelling, the guilt, the tiredness, the sadness no more. No matter I deep I dived in my writing project worlds, I felt I’d became the worst version of myself.

As far as writing goes, all the characters were suffering from it too. They were either unbelievably cheerful or so gloomy-doomy, I find myself going through a lot a re-writes.

And, In a Christmas Rom-Com novel, gloomy-doomy moods are strictly forbidden!

I kept working on the outline though, in order to write the cleanest first draft possible.

A Detailed Outline

I used to be a discovery writer. That meant re-writing a writing project two, three, four times. Yep, this kind of process it’s time consuming and a bit frustrating on the long run.

Writing a simple outline works so-so for me, since I feel I have to re-write the whole thing every time the story takes a turn I did not taught of before, and is actually better than what I had planned.

For the Christmas Rom-Com writing project, I wrote a very detailed outline and a very detailed backstories. Since in backstories you go for the main events that shaped the character to the point where the reader meets her-him-them, it was easy perfect for my sad-tired-discouraged February mood.

Chapter One : Where to Start

Big dilemma. Where should chapter one start?

It’s a Christmas Rom-Com novel. OF COURSE there’s gonna be a happy ending. OF COURSE the Main characters – in this case, classic female-male relationship – will end up together.

The biggest challenge is to meet the readers expectations and exceed them, in order to have them say « this book is impossible to put down, wow, it’s amazing, best rom-com ever ».

Where I started first is boring. Common. Very linear. Cliche.

In short, not good.

That’s where I’m at with that writing project. And why I’m writing a blog post instead of working on the first draft!!!

Dear fellow writers, thanks so so much for tagging along with me in my crazy writer quest to earn a living writing novels.

May all the good words flow your way. Until next time!