Blogfest 2009

I wrote 38 drafts of ICE. Okay, yes, some of those drafts were really, really minor, but still… My writing process involves a ton of very quick drafts in which I focus on one aspect of the story at a time. I think of it like building a human from the inside out. Not that it’s possible to build a human from the inside out. In fact, that would be kind of disgusting…

I think of my first draft like the skeleton. I don’t worry about the words at all. In fact, some scenes include lines like “And then something cool happens.” The goal of draft one is just to see if all the pieces connect together and if the shape looks like a person or like a marmot.

Next draft, I add the muscles. I fix the pacing and make the story move. Later comes the internal organs — heart so that the story has emotion, brain so that the story makes sense, lungs so that the sentences breathe with the right rhythm. Finally, I add the skin — fixing the words so that the sentences are as beautiful as I know how to make them.

The final novel (or person or marmot or whatever) usually has zero words in common with that initial draft. (Except, you know, words like “the” and “and.”) But all the underneath stuff that I developed over the course of all those drafts is in there.

Guess it’s kind of an odd process. But it works for me. Through each draft, I am reimagining the story, re-dreaming it as I rewrite it. For me, this is what makes the story come to life. It is as much a magical process as it is mechanical.