If you had asked me five years ago, “Hey Jami, when are you going to write that novel?” my derisive laughter might have given you a clue: I was pretty damn sure that I would never actually finish a novel.

Sure, I had harbored the desire to be a “writer” for most of my life, and I had even majored in Creative Writing. But I had determined that writing a novel was outside my abilities. The work ethic required, the mental fortitude and discipline it takes to actually sit down and write, day after day – that wasn’t me.

Not to mention the utter dearth of ideas that had plagued me for years. What did I possibly have to say that would be worthy of a novel?

Now I’m sitting here, about to embark on my first round of editing on my first draft. Somehow, in spite of my self-doubt and no ideas, I did write a novel – and I have 300 pages to prove it. I can’t help but ask myself: how in the hell did I manage this?

The idea

In 2016, my husband and I went to Chile. I had spent a year there in 2011, teaching English and traveling when I could. It was supposed to be my ticket to adventure, the kick start to a life filled with travel and experiences that could fill a hundred novels, but life doesn’t ever work out the way you plan it. Instead, I’d met my husband six months before I was set to leave came back after a year to start a life with him in Seattle.

2016 was my chance to show him that life I had in the year that we were apart, separated by 6,500 miles and two continents.

When we were there, an idea came into my head: what if I had come to Chile with him in the first place? And what if the stress of uprooting our lives caused us to immediately break up, shattering the dreams that we had once shared?

A scene popped into my head: a girl, alone in a hostel dormitory, desperately trying, and failing, to book a plane ticket home.

I wrote it. It was clunky and awkward since I hadn’t written fiction in years, but it was there, on paper.

The first first draft

It was October. Nanowrimo was coming up in a matter of weeks. If you don’t know, the goal in Nanowrimo is to write 50,000 in a month. My longest short story in college had been 20 pages, or about 6,000 words, and it had taken me months to complete. 50,000 words seemed huge, but with millions of other people committing to it, was it really as impossible as it seemed?

I decided to piece together a rough outline, taking experiences I’d had in my year abroad and pasting them into the sketch. I thought I was ready, or as ready as I could be.

When my alarm went off at 5:30 on November 1, 2016, I sat at my dining room table and wrote. I did it the next day, and the day after, and before I knew it, I had 20,000 words. Then I had 30,000, and, finally, on November 30 by around 9:30 p.m., I had written 50,374 words.

The stall

I was exhausted. Although I had written the right number of words, I knew from my basic outline, along with a lifetime of consuming books and movies, that I was only about two-thirds finished. I decided to take December off and come back to my manuscript in January 2017.

For more than a year, I languished between 55,000 and 65,000 words, rewriting, reorganizing, and reworking my outline over and over and over again. I was stuck. and that baffled me. I had a good idea. I knew what was supposed to happen, but I couldn’t get past that two-thirds sticking point.

What I didn’t realize is that I had fallen into a super common trap that often gets new writers: I was trying to do too much. My initial idea had been to tell both sides of the break up, the motivations and repercussions for each of them. After all, every story has two sides.

Two sides of a story that can be told, I’m sure, but for my first novel I simply did not have the skills to pull it off. I knew that I needed to shed some weight, but didn’t want to pull Graham’s narrative and focus only on Sadie. I liked Graham, and I didn’t want him to be the “bad guy.” I wanted to show a relationship falling apart, with all of its nuance and bad decisions and shared blame.

But I knew that his side of the story was weaker. His motivations were sketchy. His actions were, in many cases, unjustifiable, and I was tired of spinning my wheels trying to make it work.

The fix

Finally, in February 2018, I’d had enough. Graham’s narrative had to go. I sat down and I made a plan to incorporate the best parts of his narrative into Sadie’s. I scrapped nearly 40,000 words, and I essentially started from scratch.

And then, finally, forward progress happened quickly, easily propelled by a simple, straight-forward outline that was driven by a character I understood completely. Before I knew it, I had a first draft, 91,000 words and 300 pages of a novel that I knew was, at its core, good. Rough? Yes. In desperate need of multiple edits? Absolutely. But it was done.

So, all that to say: I’ve learned a few things about the whole first-draft-writing thing and I wanted to share them because there have to be more people out there struggling through their first draft

One: Just start! The idea is enough.

For most of us, this is the hardest part. You might have an idea that you think isn’t “enough.” It’s not “original enough,” or “good enough”, or “well-developed enough.”

If it’s a story that you want to explore, then it’s enough to get started.

That process of starting looks different for everyone. For me, it was writing a the opening image that was in my head and then outlining from there. For others, it’s a full outline, and for other, braver individuals, it’s just telling the story as it comes.

And you know what? It’s entirely possible that it isn’t good enough or original enough. That’s okay. The reality is that most writers don’t publish their first novel because first novels usually kind of suck. Listen, I’m proud of the fact that I finished my first novel, but I’m fully aware that even with the extensive edits I’m going to put it through, the likelihood of it being published is slim at best.

Two: Use your community.

Nanowrimo was a HUGE help to me. Writing is a lonely, solitary endeavor. Having a community of writers working on the same crazy goal isn’t just inspiring, it’s life-saving.

I’ve since learned that Nanowrimo isn’t really my style — forcing 50,000 words kind of just results in 40,000 words of pointless dialogue, but there are lots of ways to find your community. Join me on Instagram, find a Meetup, join a Facebook group, go to Reddit — whatever your style is, there’s a group out there for you.

Three: Use your resources.

A word to my fellow Creative Writing majors: A degree doesn’t mean you know how to write a novel. A degree means we completed the coursework and that we know the basics of story. Actually writing a novel? That you only learn by experience.

But if you want to expedite that process, there are a million resources out there. I’m currently reading Save the Cat! Writes a Novel and it’s a terrific resource for any stage of your writing.

Four: Don’t be afraid to adjust course. Kill your darlings.

Let me tell you: I don’t really believe in Writer’s Block. If you’re experiencing Writer’s Block, it’s one of two things:

1. You don’t want to write because writing is hard.
2. You’re stuck because something isn’t working in your manuscript.

If it’s number 1 — suck it up and write anyway. There’s no possible way that thinking about writing is going to solve anything.

If it’s number 2, that’s more complicated. I have this whole thought process on working out problems while you’re drafting, but that’s a topic for another post. Suffice it to say, it’s really, really easy to get too attached to the words and ideas that you’ve written. Your “darlings,” as many writers call them. But sometimes those words, or scenes, or who damn narratives (see my example above about Graham) are just mucking things up and you have to get rid of them.

Do not be afraid to adjust course. Do not be afraid to kill your darlings. Wandering further down a flawed path will only make it harder to get back on track when you finally accept that you’ll have to kill those darlings.

Five: Set deadlines – but don’t beat yourself up if you don’t reach them.

This is totally dependent on your style, but for me, I like deadlines. They give me a general time frame to work toward and instill a sense of urgency.

That said, I don’t always reach my deadlines. Life happens. I have a full time job, and friends, family. I think that the best thing you can do for your mental health is go easy on yourself — this is supposed to be fun, isn’t it?

So that’s it — my tips for getting through that first draft. Now I’m curious — what tips would you give a new author??