Good question.
My first draft is often handwritten. These are 12 fifty page legal pads plus I have an additional 125 pages typed up on a drive. (1 pad is blank but I finished that up within a month of taking this pic.)
Technically that’s about 600 pages plus 125 pages. 725 pages. But handwritten compresses amazingly so. These 600 pages, typed up, I’m about 90% done have become about 350 pages.
From there I have to then enter into the editing of that draft, let’s call it Full Draft # 2. I already know some spots that don’t work and in Draft #1, while I’m typing, I’m moving things around, cleaning things up, lightly. A general housekeeping and keeping my eye on the page count. My ultimate high for this book is 500 pages but I’d like it to go maybe low 400’s (as publisher, I’m planning against printing costs and such.) I’m looking to get it below a number yes, but I’m still in a creative stage where I don’t want to cut too deeply until I see in a proof-galley of the manuscript how it “feels” as a book, as a read. Too long, too wordy, too short, too messy?
Draft # 2 therefore is both longer and shorter than Draft # 1.
Longer because I’m adding things in, connectors, bridge points, clarifying characters and places (this is generally where I drop in my research—-on the above pad pages the marginalia often contains notes to find specific translations of words, there’s a piece about a Piazza in Italy and it’s family history that I had to research a bit, there’s a Turkish character so he introduces foods and language into the piece that I had to write in English then translate, there’s also internal notes to myself about a scene being good but it has to go before such and such so the pads are only about 80% linear in typed product to the concept of 1–12.
(the 12 legal pads in a plastic file carrier to carry easily and protect from weather issues in my bag. The sheet protectors I use to hold the pads by 3 holes in a binder until the pads outgrow a 2 1/2 inch binder and I have notes, articles, etc. to carry around per project. I then am able to file/store each project within a file folder with it’s eventual galley proofs, final copy, notes—-ultimately by teh time it’s on sale into a banker’s cardboard box in storage.)
Shorter because it’s less than the totality of 725 pages. There are minor things I’ve deleted or realized in the typing I had repeated and deleted. There are some scenes that I realized were superfluous later on in the writing. And yes, there are at least five scenes, I’ve noted in my head, that I need to type/write into the typed Draft that I didn’t want to subject myself to the OCD fury of having 13 pads and not 12 nor did I want the temptation to have to fill a thirteenth pad or follow the OCD route to needing to make 14 pads to end on an even number. Yes, I am odd.
Your methodology for good writing, should include 12 drafts because it really teaches you to both love and hate your piece. But it also gives you a definitive finish (I’ll take pics of other manuscripts in storage and show the iterations of 12 Drafts). Typing beforehand or in the beginning makes everything look permanent, the final draft, good enough, which I think can be confusing when you’re starting out in writing long pieces. You don’t have a discernible vision of what’s beginning, ready, not good and good enough.
- Having pads handwritten I KNOW that’s my draft stage, that’s where I’m just painting wildly to loud music, getting the gist of the piece out;
- when I transfer it to a Word document—-now that’s slow classical music, transferring;
- then the next draft stages it picks up again and gets very jazzy as I start “fixing” things because I know what I typed can’t be the last draft, depending upon complexity I may break it down scene by scene in each chapter on index cards;
- then I print that out and go through it once structurally, then fix those bits and pieces, the index cards I then arrange into a binder of some sort and then I got through a digital copy (generally on a tablet/phone), my index card breakdown and the handwritten copy nearby for clarification. I can then confidently go back to the digital file and start inserting needed scenes (sometimes I mark index cards for needed added scenes—-but most importantly I see redundancies;
- then I print it out again and go through it grammatically (though in the typing classical part I catch at least a thousand typos) and I discover that there are yet another two thousand additional typos;
- then I get a clean galley copy and discover five hundred more inconsistencies and typos and alterations that need to be made;
- they I get another galley copy and I’m looking for it to hit the writing beats of a strong plot (opening, conflict, climax 1,2,3, resolution of climaxes/denouement/resolution of climaxes, and final resolution);
- then another full edit;
- then a Final Draft with Cover Choice # 1, which is always different than what you thought it would be in the beginning (I make mock covers as I start Draft # 1);
- Another revision of Final Draft perhaps a different cover;
- Another Revision with final edit notes, perhaps a different cover
- Which always leads to another structural tweaking but it’s the final and the cover is pretty much decided
- The Final Final ready to publish Draft goes to the printer
Having a planned Methodology, I know not everyone will want to adopt to 12 drafts, will allow you to see what your second Draft is and thereby how it will fluctuate in being both longer/shorter than the absolute first thing you write.
By this point you’ll hate your book… and then you’ll get the Final print from the printer and you’ll fall in love with it in a different way. Buy Bankers boxes, that approximately holds all the above drafts, research, fluvia, etc., one of the things my writing mentors taught me was that the real profit on a book is not on the book but the attention, appearances and eventually, sale of your papers/drafts to universities.
Addendum: I’m trying to upload pics of the 12 step process I do because I got so many messages about it. I will upload, I promise.
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