One of the things I love most about writing fiction is that there’s no formula.
There’s no A + B = C equation you can plug your story into that will tell you if it’s working or if it’s done.
For me, this is thrilling and also somewhat unsettling.
But over the years, I’ve come to rely on a system to help me figure out when a first draft is done.
Since there isn’t a handy formula for fiction writing, there’s also no definitive way to tell when you’ve hit the end.
There are, of course, things you should do with a piece before you start thinking about it being DONE done (revise, edit, workshop, revise again, put it away for a while, etc), but how do you tell when your first draft is complete and ready for the next stage?
Read Your Piece In Full Without Editing
This is a helpful tactic throughout the entire process of writing a story, but I especially love it in the beginning.
If possible, print your story out and read it start to finish without making a single note or edit.
Read it aloud if you can. Take your time and try to imagine you’re a new reader experiencing the story for the first time.
Then…
Answer These Questions
Have I left anything off the page because I wanted to save it for later?
Write by hand and jot down any ideas, images, scenes, characters, etc. that you left out of the story (on purpose or not).
The first draft is no place to skimp on story elements. Put it all in, every word and image and idea.
Trust me. ALL OF IT.
If you’re holding anything back, you’re not done with your draft. Unless something truly doesn’t work in the story, write it in. You can take it out later, but it might also prove crucial for the story when you start revising.
Was I surprised while I wrote this? Or is there still room for surprises?
This question asks you to consider the possibility that there’s more story for you to still discover. The best way I know to determine that is to think about how many times I felt surprised while writing the draft.
By “surprised” I just mean that the story showed me something in the process of writing that I hadn’t anticipated.
It could be as simple as an image or as big as a major plot point. If I felt like the story was being revealed to me while I wrote it, then I feel confident my draft is done.
If I feel like I was too much in charge while writing and I saw everything coming, I will usually stick with a draft a while longer to unearth whatever surprises are left.
As Robert Frost famously said, “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
Put It Away For A While
I know it can feel hard to put a story away when you’re still in the honeymoon phase of a first draft, but this part is key.
Stop working it for a little while. I think a couple of weeks is the bare minimum, but longer if you can stand it. It’s your call, but here’s the thing:
The longer you’re away from a story, the clearer you can see it for what it is.
First drafts sometimes feel so precious while we’re writing them, we can’t really see beyond our own ego. Time away from a story helps to shift the mind so you can see your writing more objectively.
After some time away from a piece, you can read it again and tell if the draft is done or if you need to sit with it longer.
Another tip: start something new in the interim.
Or read everything you can get your hands on. Just try to shift your focus and cleanse your palette so you’ll feel less attached to your story when you go back to it.
While there’s no formula for telling if a first draft is done, these are a few tricks I use to ensure I’ve done everything possible with a story before moving onto the next stage.
How do you tell when a first draft is done? Do you have any tips to share?
You open your notebook and uncap your pen. This is the time you’ve set aside to write. You’re ready.
Your hand hovers over the blank page as you scan your mind for the right way to begin.
You wait… but nothing good shows up. All your ideas sound too cliche or dumb to write down.
You’re frozen, waiting, thinking, panicking, hoping something brilliant surfaces through the muck.
Finally, frustrated and dejected, you close the notebook and tuck it away in a drawer.
Or perhaps you pull up a blank Word document and stare at the blinking cursor until you can’t stand it anymore.
You write a few paragraphs or sentences, then delete it all until you have a big white space and that tiny, blinking line staring at you.
The frustration of hating every idea you have is overwhelming.
You don’t feel smart enough, good enough, funny enough to write anything decent, so you close the document and walk away.
It’s moments like these that make writing feel hard. Coming up with a good idea can feel painfully difficult, almost impossible.
The thing is, writing itself is actually not hard. The act of writing, of holding a pen or typing into a blank document, is simple.
There’s almost nothing to it.
The hard part is the mental resistance that convinces you your ideas are garbage and nothing you write will ever be worth reading.
That is what feels hard about writing. Not the writing itself, but the mental barriers we have to scale in order to write the things we want to write.
Practice Nonjudgmental Writing
Writing feels especially difficult when we get caught up in judging our work. The harsher you judge yourself, the harder the writing will feel because your bar is set too high.
What if you wrote without expecting the words to be anything in particular? Could you let the words just be whatever they are without examining them for their worth?
Could you write with a sense of detachment? As if someone else had written those words and they weren’t directly tied to your own value as a writer or human being?
Nonjudgmental writing means you allow yourself to write the things that naturally come up without assigning a value to them. You detach from the need to say if it’s good or bad or whatever.
It’s a practice in writing without expectations. You let the words exist without expecting them to become a polished, perfect short story or novel or essay on the first go. You give your writing radical acceptance.
Try this with some low-stakes exercises or prompts first, then apply it to your writing sessions. It’s a continual habit, writing without judgment or expectation, but once you start doing it often enough, you’ll see that the writing itself feels easier.
Recognize The Ways You Feel Resistance
Resistance is sneaky. It doesn’t always look or feel one way.
The top thing resistance does is convince us that writing is too hard. It accomplishes this by being clever and disguising itself.
Your resistance might come in the form of you feeling like 15 minutes isn’t enough time to write, so why bother? Or it might come through as self-judgment (who are you to write this, anyway?).
Maybe it shows up as a desire to do literally anything else but write. Laundry never seems as appealing as when you’re planning to sit down and write, after all!
Pay close attention to the ways resistance shows up in your life. As you start to see where resistance exists for you, you can be deliberate about working around it.
Maybe 15 minutes isn’t much, but you can write at least a page in that time. And maybe you’re not an expert at fiction, but you wouldn’t feel right not trying to tell this story. And yes, laundry and dishes need attention, but not right now. They can wait.
Resistance makes writing feel hard when it really isn’t. Be aware of it and write anyway and see how that starts to shift things for you.
Remind Yourself That It’s Ok If Something Is Difficult!
There’s a huge difference between feeling like writing itself is hard and feeling like a specific aspect of the writing process is hard.
And even if there are parts of writing that you find tough… that is TOTALLY OK.
Truly! It’s not going to kill you if revision is tricky or if you can never choose the right point of view or if the querying process is a lot to wrap your brain around.
There’s nothing fatal about writing.
If it feels hard sometimes, that’s ok. Accept it, try writing without judgment or expectation, and be conscious of resistance.
The truth is, if you truly want to write, you’ll do it even if it seems hard. You’ll figure out how to incorporate it into your life if it’s important enough to you.
What do you think is the hardest part of writing? How does resistance manifest for you? Tell me in the comments!
It was mid-August in 2014. I was sitting on my back deck with a notebook, freewriting scenes of what I hoped would be my first short story in a very long time.
I hadn’t written creatively in ages, and I missed it.
I’d spent the previous five months very sick with ulcerative colitis. My autoimmune disease had flared in the spring, rendering it almost impossible for me to leave my house, eat, or function normally.
An “arthritic reaction” to a medication left me almost unable to walk for about four weeks in the midst of the flare. The joints in my hips and knees and my entire lower back screamed every time I tried to go up or down the stairs, walk the dog, or sit on the couch.
Thankfully, I worked from home full time. I did my best to power through the workday, but by the time I logged off, my body would give out and I’d be asleep on the couch before dark.
When the flare started to ease up by the end of summer, my husband and I went on a trip to Bermuda for our anniversary. When we got home, I had the feeling I wanted to write about the island, but I was so out of practice from having no energy to write that I didn’t know where to begin.
I opened my notebook and wrote a few pages of a potential story. It was horrible. Too forced, too stiff.
I needed to write a short story and I needed it to be decent, and I needed my brain to work again, but everything I wrote felt like cardboard.
I settled back in my chair and exhaled. The sky was going a goldeny pink color. The air was warm and humid and smelled like low tide. My neighborhood was quiet except for the distant sound of a lawnmower and the occasional car driving by.
I felt, momentarily, like I was back in Bermuda. Warm and content and so at ease.
Here’s what you’re doing to do, I told myself after a minute, once the frustration of writing passed. You’re going to write for 100 days. Every single day. But there are rules.
You have to write at least one sentence, and it has to be creative. Work emails don’t count as writing. You can write in this notebook or on your phone or computer.
And the biggest rule is that you can’t have any expectations for any of it. You’ll write for the day, as little as a single sentence but hopefully more, and then you’ll leave it there and not worry about if it’s good or bad, what it might turn into, or if it’s worth revising. Just write and leave it on the page.
I made the decision swiftly and without second guessing it. I started that evening. Day one was thrilling. Day two had me questioning my sanity.
The first fourteen days were difficult. I resisted the practice as if doing it would physically harm me somehow.
But then something clicked one day.
Instead of feeling resistance, I started to feel that I didn’t want to miss my writing session. It began to feel as crucial to my routine as brushing my teeth.
It went from being something I had to consciously do, to something that suddenly felt like a non-negotiable part of my day.
Once I was past that hump, the writing came easier, too. I was doing prompts and exercises every day, and even revisited my favorite online writing program, The Story Course.
I would write for a few minutes or an hour, depending on the day and how into the writing I was feeling.
And then when I was done, I’d leave it on the page and not worry about it.
One day, a few weeks into the 100 days, I worked on an exercise in The Story Course (under my favorite lesson, Plot & Drift) that had me make a connection between two seemingly unrelated words.
The words were denim and fennel. I wrote about two people standing in a patch of wild fennel. The air around them glowed. It was dusk. They were of another time period, but I couldn’t tell much more than that.
The image was so clear and specific and made me curious to the point I kept thinking about it and wrote about it again the next day.
And the next and the next until I realized I had a story on my hands that wanted to be told.
The rest of my 100 days were spent freewriting about this one image. I wrote many pages that never saw the light of day again, but it hardly mattered.
Within those pages were the seeds of what became my first novel, a project I’d work on exclusively for the next four years.
I fully credit those 100 days for helping me write a book. I fully believe you too can harness the power of this process as a way to enhance your creative process.
Why It Works
The formula is simple: consistency + a challenge = success.
One hundred days sounds like a lot, but it goes very quickly. For me, it’s just the right amount of time to feel slightly daunted yet energized by the prospect of accomplishment.
Once you push through the muck of resistance, you’ll start to feel ease around the whole process. That ease comes from consistency. Consistency creates a habit.
And habit is the magic sauce that will help you write come hell or high water.
When you turn writing into a reliable habit rather than something you feel obligated to do or something you actively resist or something you can only do under special circumstances, you’re so much more productive and happy.
There’s no drama when your writing is a habit. It’s just easy. The stuff you write might be hard in its own way, but the act of writing will be easy.
Sitting down and getting started will be second nature instead of a hostage negotiation. That alone makes it worth writing for 100 days!
How To Get Started
Just… get started.
Ok, I know that sounds too easy and too hard at the same time, but that’s all it is! It’s a choice.
You don’t need any special tools or equipment. It costs nothing. You don’t need more than a couple of minutes a day. You just need to decide you’re doing it and agree to the rules, especially the rule about having no expectations.
If you go into this expecting to come out with a novel, you’ll struggle. But if you go in with no expectation except that you’ll write something each day, I promise you’ll surprise yourself.
Don’t plan ahead. There’s no way you can predict the incredible things that’ll show up on the page when you’re committed to writing consistently.
If this is something you want to try, make it as simple as humanly possible for yourself.
Keep a notebook and pen handy (bedside table, kitchen counter, in your bag).
Set a reminder on your phone. Ask someone you trust to keep you accountable.
And remember you don’t have to write more than one sentence. You can write a single sentence, can’t you? It doesn’t have to amount to anything once it’s written. You just have to write it. And once you write it, you’re done for the day.
Unless you feel a spark and keep writing, which is ok too.
At the end of 100 days, you might have one or a dozen new stories to work on. You might be in the middle of your novel. Or you might simply have the sheer satisfaction of sticking with your writing for 100 days.
That right there is the key to writing, after all: return to it again and again and again. That’s the only way anything gets written, and it’s how to evoke magic, too.
I hit send on my first query to a literary agent in February of 2018. I remember the moment clearly.
It was late in the evening, mid-winter, and I was sitting on the couch next to my husband, Matt. I read the email draft about a dozen times and then asked Matt to hold my hand while I hit send.
And then I did a little celebratory dance!
I’d sent my first query. It was to an agent I’d met in person a couple years earlier who had requested I send my novel to her when it was done.
Although she didn’t think the project was a good fit for her list, I kept sending queries. I kept revising my query letter, I kept reworking my opening chapters.
And finally, after about seven or eight months and the same number of rejections, I decided to stop for a while.
I’d started a new novel in the middle of all that querying (honestly, it was because Lauren Groff told me to… but more on that in another blog post) and felt a little bummed that nobody wanted to see the novel I’d just spend four years working on.
Now, a year later, the sting of rejection has faded and I have some thoughts to share about the process.
Here are some of my top tips for novelists who are about to start querying a novel.
Wait Until Your Novel Is REALLY Ready… But Don’t Wait For Perfection
Here’s the weird, delicate line you have to walk as a hopeful novelist: you should work on your book until it’s as good as you can get it, but don’t sit on it so long you never send it into the world.
You shouldn’t query a manuscript you haven’t revised multiple times. There’s just no way it’ll be ready for an agent after one or maybe even two drafts. Respect your story enough to take your time writing and revising it, having beta readers give you feedback, and proofreading it carefully.
You might even want to work with a developmental editor to make sure the story works. Do what you have to do to make your story shine.
BUT.
Don’t spend your entire life tinkering with it in an attempt at perfection. It’ll never be perfect. And there will always be something you can change in your book. I’m sure that’s true even after books are published.
All you can do is make the manuscript as good as you can possibly make it at this point in time.
Maybe in five years, you’d write it differently, but do you want to sit with it for another five years and rewrite it? Or do you want to make it great right now and try to get it published?
Do A LOT Of Research
Before you query agents, you should do as much research as humanly possible on the following:
- How to write a query letter (there are zillions of resources online, but I got the most out of the Print Run podcast’s special episodes. You have to pay a small fee to access their query letter and first pages episodes, but it’s VERY worth it. Check out their regular free episodes too!)
- Comp book titles (or, books that are in some way similar to yours that are already on the market)
- Agents (don’t skimp on this. Carefully research the agents you want to query. Know what they already represent, what they’re seeking, how you might fit in, etc. Don’t pick random agents to query. Be as thoughtful as possible with this step.)
I spent months writing and rewriting my query letter, and even more time researching and making a list of the agents I wanted to query. It might be time-consuming, but it’s worth every minute!
Have A Support System
I don’t know what I’d do without my writing group and my writing friends who generously agree to read my work, give me feedback, workshop my pieces, and generally support my writing.
You absolutely must have at least one trusted writer in your life who is supportive, honest, and empathetic.
This, to me, is non-negotiable. If you don’t have this person in your life yet, or you want more, reach out and let me know. I offer a writing coaching service that doubles as this exact thing!
Support is important because writing is solitary, rejection is tough, and sometimes the best way to keep going is knowing there’s someone in your corner.
And it’s just nice to talk to another writer sometimes! We get so caught up in our own minds and our own projects that we forget so many other writers deal with the same feelings.
We might write alone, but that doesn’t mean writing has to be lonely.
Writing is best when shared with other people who love it, too.
Work On Other Projects
Once you’ve polished your novel and your query letter and started sending them to agents, do yourself a favor and START SOMETHING NEW.
If you haven’t already, that is.
I literally had to hear this advice from Lauren Groff’s mouth at a book signing before I realized it’s what I needed to do. It was beyond helpful.
Starting a new novel meant I could focus on something besides the pending queries I’d sent out.
It also meant the rejections hurt a little less since I was working on a project that would likely be the next thing I’d query down the road. If the first book didn’t work out, I had another one in progress.
Always have something else simmering. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Insert other cliches. You get what I mean, though!
I would love to talk to you about how to start new projects, how to maintain existing projects, and how to stay consistent with your writing even when it feels like there’s no time. Click here to learn more!
Tell me about the project you’re working on and if you have any querying tips!
It really bugs me when people say, “We all have the same 24 hours in a day” as a tool for motivation.
As if it’s that simple! As if each person, each day, each life is exactly the same. Sure, a day does contain 24 hours, but that doesn’t mean each minute will be used the same way for everyone.
Not even close.
So when someone decides they want to write more (or simply begin writing), hearing the old adage that “Oprah has the same number of hours in a day as you!” really doesn’t help if you feel like you have no time to write as it is.
In fact, it usually just makes people feel terrible about their productivity, their time management, and themselves. And that doesn’t lead to a happy writer.
Instead of comparing my use of time to anyone else’s, I would much rather think of creative ways to find and use viable writing time in my life.
This is something anyone can do regardless of their schedule. Here are some of my top tips for finding time to write when you have no free time.
Rethink Your Writing “Sessions”
I used to have trouble writing if I didn’t have the right conditions: a full two or three hours to myself, the motivation to write, something exciting to write about, a good mug of coffee within reach, etc.
It was such a lousy way to exist as a writer because I always felt like I wanted to write, but I had this huge mental block telling me I wouldn’t be productive if I “only” had a few minutes.
So instead of doing what I could with the time I had, I would watch those opportunities float away and wait for the conditions to be perfect before I wrote a thing.
Eventually, I trained myself out of that bad habit. The main thing I had to do was actively rethink my writing sessions.
Instead of always needing a large block of time, I learned I could actually write quite a bit in five or ten minutes.
Having a baby also helped me further reframe my writing time. During the newborn days, I’d write while the baby napped (usually right on my chest). Since I never knew when exactly he’d wake up, I would get right to work when he dozed off, which meant less time spent agonizing over starting.
Think about your writing as a constantly flowing stream you can access whenever you want.
You don’t have to set aside special blocks of time for it (although you can!) and you’re allowed to dip in and out of it as often as you want in a single day.
Carry around a notebook or use your phone to write when those small scraps of time pop up. Even if that means you write for ten minutes while you’re in the drive-through pharmacy line or while you’re on your lunch break, it still counts.
And, it adds up.
Know There’s No Such Thing As Wasted Time
I struggle with feeling like I’m wasting time if I’m not being “productive” (i.e. actively working on something that will get me closer to my goals) every moment I’m not parenting my kid.
But the truth is this: as writers, there’s no such thing as wasted time.
If you’re a writer, your inherent job is observing the world. If you’re sitting quietly and simply taking in your surroundings, you’re not wasting time.
If you’re busy with your kids or your job or your endless to-do list, you’re not wasting time.
All of it is fodder for your writing. Every second of your life has the potential to shift something in your writing if you’re observing it closely enough.
None of that is wasted time. Every moment you spend in curious observation of the world around you just enriches your writing that much more.
And if you’re like me and sometimes battle the feeling that rest is wasteful, take a deep breath and tell yourself a burnt-out writer is less productive than a well-rested writer.
Consider Your Options
This might seem obvious to some people, but it really wasn’t that obvious to me right away.
In order to fit something additional into an already very full life, you usually have to consider removing something else from the equation.
Unless you’re willing to sacrifice sleep, you may have to scan the landscape of your day to see where you can cut something.
If you have absolutely zero time to fit in even a ten-minute writing session, think about what other ten-minute-long acts you have in your day that could go.
“Stop scrolling social media” is always a favorite tip in articles about finding more time, but maybe it’s just a matter of giving up ten minutes of scrolling in place of writing.
Can someone else in your life take over one or two of your responsibilities so you free up the mental space and actual time for writing?
Can you wake up ten minutes early? Write while you’re eating lunch? Skip the coffee run and write at home while you’re brewing it in your kitchen?
These are small suggestions to get you started since only you know which things in your life are non-negotiable and which are more flexible.
I’ve helped other writers get started on their dream projects, finish projects that were slowing down, find time to write each day when they thought they couldn’t, and even figure out how to keep writing while caring for a sick family member.
I would love to help you write more, too. Sometimes the best way to get started is to have someone supportive in your corner helping you be consistent and focused. That’s exactly what you’ll get if you work with me, plus some.