This is my third 'Words about words' post about CREATING A FIRST DRAFT of your novel, start to finish.

I have another series brewing about EDITING THE SH*T OUT OF YOUR FIRST DRAFT to create a BEAUTIFUL POLISHED GEM...stay tuned!

Lovelies, I'm just opening up my writing process today to show you my not-glamorous process of building a novel piece by piece, including the dust on my laptop and my untidy handwritten scrawl. I've completed five novels, and am working on my sixth--if you're an aspiring novel writer, or you've finished a novel or two and want to take some of the pain out of the process, I hope you find something here you can use!

I'm going to talk about the tools I use to keep the pieces orderly as I go, as well as what the work flow looks like on the daily. I'll be using examples from For Us, with spoiler warnings. Lastly, I'll share my number one tip for writing a novel as you share out on Wattpad.

Rae's Tools

1 fast pen

A stack of Cambridge notebooks

Post-It notes

1 big whiteboard

Smart device with keyboard and OneNote for Windows.

Last week I talked about using research to make a big pile of creative 'muck' for your story. At some point in all this research, scenes start popping into my head and I just take a fast pen and throw them down in a notebook, long hand. I don't worry about spelling, about names of characters, or about introducing a scene with description. I just give a quick heading, like a sentence of what this scene is about, or when I imagine it occurs in the story, and let the action flow out of my pen.

When I'm just starting a novel, I fish around for what it's about by writing various opening scenes, long hand.

The first thing I wrote for For Us was the conversation between Kurt and Jon at a club, years after their undefined, closeted relationship in high school. I had a sense for what Jon was doing with his life now--looking after foster kids in a group home setting--but not how he got there. I could feel how attracted he would be to Kurt still, and the conflict that attraction would create with his chosen career path. I knew Kurt would still have feelings for Jon, because he's a very feely person, and since he's out now he allows himself to express all the things as colourfully as he likes.

That's not a story, though, just an intriguing set up and some lovable characters.

So next I get a little more organized. I open up a new OneNote project and create a chapter called 'Plot muck.' I ask myself some questions: What could happen next? What's the problem? What's the happy ending we want? What's in the way? (Can you see this photo? Can you zoom in? This is the actual For Us project in progress)

My For Us questions:

What if the asshole ex-boyfriend Kurt mentioned is still in his life?

What if Kurt's been using alcohol to cope with his difficult circumstances? Where is he at on his recovery journey?

Where does Kurt live? What if it's not as sparkly as it looks on stage?

Where does Jon live? If he has a stable home life with Cary, could that be just the thing Kurt needs in his life?

What's the shadow side to Jon's discipline and self-control? How's he doing emotionally, really?

Who lives in Jon's work house? How could the drama with the River House kids weave into the drama of Jon's personal life?

As I'm asking these questions, I'm writing notes to myself, or snippets of scenes, either long hand or right into this OneNote 'Plot Muck' chapter. Possible future events are starting to take shape, and I get the fun of deciding what line of story I want to pursue.

YES to Indigenous kids in Jon's work house. I have a heart for Indigenous people in Canada and took a course on our shared history a few years back.

YES to Kurt doing Alcoholics Anonymous (however hit-and-miss his sobriety might be at the start of the story). I've been interested in the 12 Steps program for some time.

YES to Jon's self-care yoga practice, and a whole sparring floor/punching bag set up in his basement. I wish I was more faithful with practising my yoga flow and I'll give it to Jon on the page lol. (Which further suggests--does Jon have an anger problem? Does he need to punch things sometimes?)

I know I've hooked the Big One when a climax and concluding scenes start crowding into my head.

At some point the 'what ifs' catalyze into a conflict that's explosive enough to be the climax of a novel-length story. I just write those scenes as quickly as I can, long-hand, without worrying about how they connect to the opening chapters yet.

*FOR US climax spoilers ahead*

I wrote the climax of For Us--'The Barns', 'Ride Home' and 'Aftermath' chapters--SIMULTANEOUS to writing Jon and Kurt's first 'date' in Jon's house. In previous projects, I explored vulnerability and abuse, but I wasn't ready to write about sexual abuse until this project, not coincidentally my first novel geared to twenty-somethings instead of teenagers.

The Barns pushed the 'what if' of Kurt's emotional and physical vulnerability, as a queer man without family connections, right to the most extreme edge of possible outcomes. The Barns also pushed Jon to the edge, challenging his emotional reserve, his desire for justice, and his visceral need to protect those he cares for. (Honestly, it took me two weeks to emotionally recover from walking through The Barns with Kurt. I'm so grateful my family didn't pack up and leave their moody writer-wife and mom in that time. All the tears and rage.)

After writing those scenes as fast as possible, I put them down to let them sit for a bit and went back to figure out--how do we get there? And what happens after?

Just keep showing up.

Once the climax of my story has broken, my writing process becomes a less urgent, daily process of showing up to connect the pieces of the story.

I wasn't sure what would happen after the Barns, but I was imagining a Christmas-y proposal somewhere near the end. At this point, I labelled all the scenes in my notebooks with Post Its to find them when needed, and I created a big plot outline on my whiteboard, sketching out how to use the pieces I'd thrown down in the early stages of story creation to get from first date to post-Barns.

This is the part of novel writing that demands my daily attention to keep track of all the threads. I use my best early-morning creative energy to write new stuff long hand, and at the end of the day I put that long hand into my computer, polishing and filling in blanks, making the messy scribbles coherent. In the months a first draft is emerging, I'm shuttling back and forth between hot new words coming out of my pen, and the more cool-headed organizing those scenes and typing them into One Note chapter by chapter. I often read and make small edits on my phone before I go to sleep. I'm pretty single-minded when a novel has a hold of me.

(I appreciate OneNote because it's easy to jump back and forth between chapter sections. Unlike Word, where you have to scroll and scroll to make an adjustment to a particular scene. I started using OneNote midway through writing Hiding, and it was a breakthrough tool for me.)

As I find my way through the story, I'm trying to sniff out the hottest drama--what could go wrong, what would resolve that drama just for a short time before it all unravels again? On a small scale, I'm still always throwing down track ahead of where I'm writing. I write the gutsy, emotional scenes that appeal to me most, usually loose and long hand, then backtrack to figure out how to realistically get there.

Sometimes my need for realism opens up a new, better storyline in the middle of creating my project--like, as I researched Indigenous kids in foster care, Jordin and Dusty and their mother became their own fully-realized side plot.

I figure, why not? Why not follow the threads of the weird, specific things that make up the fabric of your personal interests? Why not follow your passion and write what you love? Who else is going to tell the story you would want most to read? I bet you're not the only person interested in that...

Guard the flame: a note on creative containment and Wattpad.

In 'A Right to Write' Julie Cameron emphasizes that containment is needed in the early stages of a project. If you open up your baby story to readers too soon, their feedback can trample the little shoots of life that are just emerging. Sharing your story on Wattpad can be very motivating, and/or it can kill your story before it's done.

I'm 42 years old, and I have a pretty sure sense of myself. But I still am mindful of who I really care about as I write and share here. I have a very small number of actual people in mind as I write a first draft, and I limit the voices I listen to when I'm in the process of creating a first draft. I might directly ask for 'reader response' comments ONLY, because I don't want to move into editing mode until I have a complete draft to work with.

(And this is a lesson for you when you comment on unfinished works as well--a mistake I've made is bringing critical feedback before a writer is ready! That's not supporting their creative process. First they need an ending! Then they need feedback to edit.)

I have a high need for realism in my writing and obviously (thankfully) I haven't personally experienced everything I write about. So the only readers I care about at this stage of the process are the first readers that I hand-pick. These are friends who have lived some of the story personally and are willing to have lengthy conversations with me about it. In the SCARS trilogy, my first reader was a 16-year old abuse survivor who showed up in my church youth group. In For Us, my first reader was a friend and colleague who lived Jon's careful, closeted life, serving as a youth pastor in his early twenties before resigning and coming out.

I find posting my writing on Wattpad very motivating. I work well to a deadline, and the twice weekly posting schedule resulted in two complete novels in under eight months, to my amazement! However, I'm not writing for a wide Wattpad audience at first--beyond these first reader friends and myself, I need to not care what anyone else thinks about the project. I trust when the thing is finished, the same Spirit that hovered over my creative process will find exactly who needs this story.

First, tell the story that YOU need right now.

And if your readers like a work in progress, they can come along for the ride. But they need to keep it down in the backseat, all right? All you want to hear from them is loud cheering and how much they're loving the journey and how much they're feeling all the feelings and how curious they are about what happens next. ;)

When the first draft is done, there's all kinds of time to ask the hard questions about Who's this for? And Does it make sense? And Will anyone turn all the pages and care? Stay tuned for my next 'Words about words' post about the EDITING part of completing a novel!

(YES, you absolutely must go through an editing process on your novel. No one writes a masterpiece on their first go, I'm sorry. But you're not alone, and you can learn to do this. You will love your characters even more after! ...and then you'll be a bit sick of them and need a break. Which is good motivation to start throwing down track for something new! Lol)

*Your turn, lovely writer friends--what tools or tricks work for you to keep your novel organized and your creativity flowing over the long haul?*