Way, way, wayyyyy back in the late twenty-teens, I set out to write a novel draft and documented every day that I worked on it here (for posterity, of course!). I thought, as I set out this October and November to try to pin down this heavy, from-scratch rewrite of my current novel, that it might be fun to revisit the diary method and see if it proves useful and/or interesting for folks reading along!
So here it is! The Drafting Diary for Love Me to the Bone – draft 1. I’ll be tracking word count and making general notes about the process, but if there’s anything you’d like to get more detailed with, let me know either in the comments or via the contact form, and I’ll see what I can do!
Love Me to the Bone
Draft 1 – Drafting Diary
Words Added: 1,106
What Happened in the Story: Madeline George, our intrepid MC, has just achieved the major career success she’s been working herself ragged for, is high on Cloud 9, and just died getting hit by a car. RATS. As my sons would say: Worst. Day. Ever.
Additional Notes: So a couple of things to note as I get started here. The first is that I’ve decided to do the Matt Bell (Refuse to be Done) method of formatting my document like I’m book formatting the final product. Honestly, this is just to keep things fun and remind myself what I’m working towards. I enjoyed book formatting for Apex Books back in the day, so this is a nice throwback to that kind of thing.
Secondly, I’m working off a very loose outline. It’s about two pages of light summary, but not nearly as detailed as summary drafts I’ve done in the past. It’s basically got the tentpole moments, and that’s about it, giving me a lot of freedom to screw around and take random detours as my wild little heart desires. But otherwise, aside from those major moments, I have very little planned out other than vibes and feels.
Now, to note, this is essentially a third draft, because I wrote two other drafts of this story previously. HOWEVER, it’s a complete, from-scratch rewrite. What does this mean? It means I’ve basically got the same characters to play with, but they’ve been re-envisioned, reworked, redeveloped, and I’ve swapped main characters, and basically nothing from the first versions will be able to translate. HA. Fun. But I’m actually excited about this because ultimately, I think this variant is going to be so much more fun.
Thanks for following along, and I hope you enjoy the ride! I’ll try and make these daily updates (on writing days), but I’ll probably miss a few now and then. Sorry about that in advance, but I’ll do my best to be consistent. If you’re craving some personal stakes in this process, feel free to toss me a “You Can Do It!” donation at my Ko-fi shop! I’m going to need a lot of coffee for this…