Finishing a novel

I started writing Fourth Drop in 2009 by extrapolating a ranting short story into a longer one. This took me about two years. At the end of the ‘first draft’ I had a lot of scenes and some summaries in an order that made sense to the narrative I’d conjured.

The main work of the second draft was about ensuring the story flowed between these scenes and summaries, filling in known gaps as I came across them. In this way, the second draft looked a lot more like something someone might identify as a novel. The plot made sense and the characters even developed a little, though the writing was still pretty scrappy. (Except for some sections where I had laboured over and over the prose to make it perfect.)

Unfortunately, the third draft was all about perfecting each sentence. I say unfortunately because, really, it was too early for perfecting prose, which you’ll understand when I write about draft six below…

After the third draft, I printed many many copies and gave them to carefully selected readers who understood some of the issues within. Though I wouldn’t recommend getting over twenty beta readers’ feedback in one fell swoop, and wouldn’t do so again, I’m glad I did at the time. People were generous, fair and articulate both in their praise and criticism. Some even made suggestions for how to solve some of the issues.

The story improved during the fourth draft when I incorporated all of the feedback into the manuscript. Mostly, the feedback was consistent and mostly I adopted it completely. One of the things I realised I needed to do was understand the book’s world better. Thus far I had written the story from my own experience plus a bit of reading. So, a large part of writing the fourth draft of Fourth Drop (I do like the rhythm of that phrase… if only it ended there… ) was research—interviewing and immersion. For me, this was the most challenging, the reasons for which will be the subject of a future blog.

If I was more committed to researching for this blog right now, I’d dig around in my boxes of hard-copy notes to discover specifically what happened during the fifth draft. Off the top of my head, I’ve got nothin! But I’ve kept all my notes so that I can write the definitive ‘how I wrote Fourth Drop’ book when I’m famous, so stay tuned…

Somewhere around here, though, I sent it to agents and one publisher, who had been courting me and my work for two years. Though there was significant interest, ultimately no one wanted to represent or publish it, but I was able to gather some feedback in a world well known for rejection sans explanation. (Thank you!)

The sixth draft. I know exactly what happened there. I cut the overblown thing from 113,000 words to 62,000. Yes, I did and it felt fabulous! I knew that this version was too pared, but I also loved that it only had what was needed. Bare bones. But I’d killed so many damn darlings, there was very little love left.

And that was a problem for the agent I sent it to, who picked and poked at the fact that the admittedly outdated synopsis didn’t match the story itself. Again, I got some useful feedback from this agent, though not enough to pursue her representation of my work.

Cue in huge break…

What to do?

Could not work it out. Got busy with other things.

Cue in covid-19. Cue in JobKeeper. Cue in partner at home to help. Cue in my intentional right-sizing finally working in my favour.

By chance, and through my work writing profiles, I finally found the mentor I’d been craving for years.

Sam Cooney and I hit it off straight away. He read the abbreviated 62,000 words and totally got what I was trying to do, made thoughtful suggestions for change and expansion. Now all I had to do was carve out time to write the SEVENTH draft of my manuscript.

It took seven months to clear the desk and clear my head.

The seventh draft involved my writing a detailed chapter summary of what happened when in this version of Fourth Drop. I really needed this. I couldn’t remember what was in or out of it now. I changed the tense from past to present: instantly more energy. I strengthened my two main characters and I reinstated a couple of darlings. (Oh, the joy!) I wrote a couple of new scenes. A whole new chapter. I explained things more clearly. Then I sent it to Sam for comment. He said it was shit-hot and shiny. (Paraphrasing, of course.)

Then I wrote a pitch, a biography and a synopsis, and sent Fourth Drop out into the world. Currently, I’m enjoying a break between the seventh and eighth drafts…