Several years ago, when Pippa was about one year old, I got an idea for a fantasy novel. It was just the tiniest glimmer of an idea, and I was already writing my memoir about postpartum depression, but the idea would not leave me alone.

I finally started writing the rough draft for the fantasy novel in Spring 2018. I wrote about 75% of that first attempt at a first draft, and then realized I had it all wrong. So I opened a new document and started over. I got about 50% written of that first draft before realizing, again, I had it all wrong. So I opened yet another new document and started yet again on the story idea that would not leave me alone.

Is it still a first draft if you have written 75% + 50% of the prior drafts?

After about three first drafts (I lost track), I wrote a very long outline. In Fall 2019 (approximately an eon ago, in an entirely different world), the outline felt right.The final draft will be very different from that outline, but I knew I had my heroine and her world. It was time to buckle up and actually finish a first draft already.

I started writing.

At the beginning of this year, as I was thinking about my 2020 goals, I looked at what I had written and decided I could probably finish the first draft of the first book in my fantasy series by July 31, 2020. I told myself that I was being ambitious but it was important to have a deadline. I would just push back the deadline as necessary.

Then the Covid-19 Adventures started.

I kissed the July 31, 2020 deadline goodbye. How could I finish a first draft of a first novel while overseeing distance learning with my kids? But I kept writing! The hour or two that I spent writing the first draft of my fantasy novel was a fun escape from the uncertainty of the pandemic. It energized me. I could not NOT continue working on my fantasy series.

Then I finished the first draft in mid-May 2020, two and a half months ahead of my self-imposed deadline.

WTF?

It happened quite suddenly. I have been using a four-part structure that I learned in Larry Brooks’ book Story Engineering. I highly recommend the book to anyone writing a novel. Writing the middle part of my first draft (Parts 2 and 3 in Brooks’ structure) was a slog. I kind of knew what I needed to write, but I abandoned my outline after writing about 10,000 words of the first draft. As much as I would like to be a plotter, I’m a pantser. I discover my story by writing it.

But then I hit Part 4, the last 25% of my draft, and holy eff, I just knew what I had to write. The words poured out of me. In the space of two weeks, I went from “I’ll be lucky to finish a draft in 2020” to “OMG it’s done!” It was glorious.

So now, whew, it’s June 2020 and I have not been blogging much because I have been digging into the first draft of my fantasy novel. First, I had to read it. I told myself I would read it as quickly as possible and hardly take any notes. By the time I finished reading the draft, I “only” had 28 pages of handwritten notes. (Both sides of the page.)

I guess “read it as quickly as possible and hardly take any notes” is not my process.

Now I am turning the 28 pages of notes into a Plan of Attack. I am getting a lot of ideas (many of which might eventually be good), and I am having fun. Once I have finished typing up my notes, I am going to attempt to reverse engineer an outline, and then use that outline to reshape the story.

I did not think it was possible to make any real progress on my first novel during the pandemic, but now, as I do the work, this feels very right. The pandemic is restricting the amount of time I have to work on revisions, but maybe that is a good thing. I am getting plenty of time to mull things over and have shower epiphanies.