In Part 1 of this series, I wrote about my long road of novel revision and some of the reactions I received regarding just how extensive the process has been. In this second and final installment, I’ll open the novel folder on my computer and share some stats surrounding my drafting process for the manuscript. Here goes:
The Main Folder
The folder dedicated to my novel (named after a now-defunct working title of the manuscript) contains 79 individual files as well as four additional subfolders. Those 79 documents include everything from full drafts of the manuscript to critiques from writing friends, individual chapters, synopses, research notes, repeated attempts at new openings, deleted scenes and sections and characters (RIP), excerpts formatted for grant and residency applications, PDF and jpgs related to the latter drafts, and more.
While the oldest document in this folder is dated September 15, 2012, the novel was officially born in August 2012 at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, where I dreamed up the premise during a craft class writing exercise. I knew right away I had something I might want to work on long term, and I vowed to see it through. I finished the first full draft of the novel in May 2013.
Subfolder #1
The first subfolder is an outlier, and it highlights the flaws in my organizational system. It contains only two files—the Summer 2014 draft marked up with comments from one of my writing friends, and then a separate document containing her comprehensive written critique of the manuscript. Meanwhile, all the other (many, many) comments from more than half a dozen additional writing friends are scattered throughout the rest of the folders.
I can’t even bring myself to open the Summer 2014 draft, by the way, because I remember it as such a misguided, weak, flawed attempt.
Subfolder #2
This folder is named “REWRITE” and represents my decision, in the summer of 2016, to completely toss the latter half the novel and rewrite it, changing the plot drastically. This subfolder contains 54 items, with revisions completed from 2016 to early 2018. Aside from full drafts, files in this folder contain lots of deleted scenes (including one called, unbearably, “sock folding scene”—but don’t worry, it’s no longer in the book), deleted chapters, and even more comments from writing group members.
This subfolder includes quite a few documents with “orphan” in the file name. An orphan is any bit of writing—whether a line, a paragraph, or a full scene—that I loved but felt had to be removed from the manuscript for whatever reason, and I hoped to find a way to work it in again. The act of saving these orphans in separate files freed me to delete them from the larger manuscript because I knew they still existed somewhere. Most of these orphans, however, never found their way back into the novel.
Finally, this subfolder includes a document named “Sticky Areas,” which is how I refer to any writing passage that might not need big changes but just doesn’t feel fully there yet and requires some additional polish and attention. The more I revised this novel, the better attuned I became to recognizing sticky areas by instinct alone.
Subfolder #3
This folder is called “AGENTS” and includes multiple versions of queries, several versions of partial and full drafts of the manuscript, and a document with the manuscript’s first 10 pages formatted to paste into email, all from a relatively short window in 2016-2017. Finally, this subfolder includes comments, notes, and suggestions from the agent I ultimately signed with.
Subfolder #4
This is the current “2018 REVISION” folder. It includes 35 documents ranging from four distinct full drafts of the novel (spanning from February to October 2018), full drafts filled with notes and comments from writing friends, research notes, individual scenes to be reworked, orphans, revision notes and reminders, and more.
To Create and Destroy
All told, my main novel folder includes nearly 200 files, many of which could be considered failures. Those files hold entire drafts, chapters, and plot points that landed on the cutting room floor. Characters were born and then wiped out, entire settings created only to be destroyed. We’re talking scenes and narrative arcs and fictional people that I worked on for months, if not years, and prose that I combed through repeatedly to craft and polish and improve, all gone as if I’d never written them at all.
Many of the sections I cut included scenes my beta readers raved about, moments that felt fully realized and tension-filled, prose that I absolutely slaved over, or entire chapters that won me scholarships to writing conferences or entrance into funded residencies. This was writing that in many senses worked, but it’s now relegated to this collection of files on my computer. I cut these sections because it made the book stronger, because it freed me to create new and better material, and because I wanted to end up with a manuscript that matched my vision.
But as much as the novel changed, other things stayed the same: my protagonist, the core characters, the general premise. And amazingly, the novel’s opening and closing paragraphs have survived from the first draft to the current one. They anchor the book, front to back, and now serve as reminders that I’ve known the heart of the story all along. That heart is in the beginning, and it’s in the end—it just took a heck of a lot of work in the middle to make everything connect.
I can’t predict what will happen with this novel in the future, but I do know there’s a reason I never gave up on the book. I also believe this creative effort will be worthwhile, both for me and for my development as a writer, regardless of what happens in terms of publication.
Sometimes I think back to the writer I was on that summer day in 2012, when I wrote the first lines of this novel during a simple writing exercise. I had no concept of the scope of the journey ahead of me. I couldn’t imagine the headaches and heartache this book would produce—the wasted drafts, the wrong turns, the rough parts, the self-doubt, the anxiety, the waiting—but I also couldn’t fully imagine the final form of the manuscript I ended up with, something that is perhaps stranger and wilder than I anticipated.
The resulting manuscript isn’t anything I could have created in a single draft, or after a few rounds of light revision. It took time, effort, and an evolving understanding of not just the story I was telling but of my own instincts and tastes as a writer. And if I had to do it all over again to get to where I am now—all those drafts, failed attempts, and tangle of files that ended up deleted and trashed—I would.