found drama

In case you missed it elsewhere:

1.5 hours, +946 words becomes 3.5 hours, 3,021 words

Plus… we call that a draft. I was closer than I thought to the end of my notes. And when I saw that, I decided to just put my head down, pour more whiskey, and finish.

It certainly puts the “rough” in “rough draft”, but it is finished. Finished, and ready for me to do some writerly self-mutilation on it. It’s ready for the red ink and the re-edits.

116,268 words.

If you don’t know the backstory: This is the novel that I first conceived back in about 2009 or so with a text message to myself during a walk to work one morning:

Like a steampunk space opera?

Only not steampunk, and not a space opera. It kicked around as notes and sketches for a little while and then when I read this piece in the New York Times, it became clear to me what I needed to write. It went through an incomplete iteration in 2010 as my NaNoWriMo novel that year. And then again in a refined/revised/expanded format in 2011, again as part of NaNoWriMo. But since I was very much admittedly “not done”, I committed myself to keep at it.

And this is draft it it. Not “incomplete”, but not perfect. And not even like “I am naïve enough to think I could have a perfect publishable draft”, but more like “this is not even really the story I want”. But I’ve put enough hours into this world and into this story now that I think I do know what I want. More than I did in January 2010 when I read that NYTimes piece.

This one goes all the way. And though I’ve many miles hours of revising to go, this one is the real thing.

About Rob Friesel