old draft, new year

How I've embraced my drafting process, and some aspirations for 2024

In this newsletter:

I finished a draft of my novel…and I don’t hate it!

My focuses for the new year include 100% more hurdy-gurdy

There’s a 15% discount on all my services at Labyrinth Editing for the month of January!

Happy New Year, friends!

We’re already in the second week of 2024, and things on my end are off to a good but quiet start. I hope that the turning of the year treated you kindly, and that you’re starting 2024 in the way you like best, whether that’s with reinvigoration and new goals, or embracing the slow quiet of winter.

Writing update

Before I get into what I’m working on for the upcoming year, I wanted to talk a bit about what feels like my biggest writing accomplishment from 2023: finishing the draft of Project Alchemy. I wrapped up the first draft of this standalone adult fantasy on December 18^th, and it clocked in at just over 114,000 words. I’ve been waiting for the big wallop of self-doubt that tends to accompany finishing a draft for me, but it’s just…never come.

I suspect there are a couple of reasons for this, none of which have to do with the quality of the draft.

The notebook I used for writing out notes and ideas as I drafted Project Alchemy

The first is that with this project, I established a better handle on my drafting process. I made peace with the fact that I’m probably always going to alternate between drafting and tweaking my outline as I write my way into new discoveries. It’s discovery writing with a roadmap, or my personal version of that E.L. Doctorow quote:

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

I also drafted this project over a much shorter time, collectively, than my previous novel (even though it took me a whole year!) This time, though, the back and forth I did with this story, developing it as I went, allowed me to delve into the parts of the story that sparked my interest: worldbuilding, creating realistic and flawed characters, and making motivations show up on the page. It’s frustrating at times to switch from the forward motion of drafting new words to pondering the direction I’m taking the story, but I think this draft is stronger for it. If this slower pace is what it takes to finish a significant step in story creation without killing my spirit, I’ll take it.

The second reason I have a little more love for this draft is that, maybe obviously, I haven’t had to revise it yet. Even though I couldn’t really keep myself from analyzing it as I went, I did a pretty decent job of working with my inner editor instead of stifling them completely. I’ve talked before about how I use a “shadow outline” as a holding place for notes on any glaring issues I’ll need to address later. This method keeps me from spending too much mental energy on the problems that start cropping up in a draft, and generates the bones of a revision plan as I write. But most importantly, it allows me to keep writing forward, knowing that solving those problems is a task for a future draft.

So, for this draft, working with that analytical part of my brain instead of against it meant keeping the majority of what I discovery-wrote as part of my draft. It’s all there: contradictory worldbuilding, changing character motivations, filler text that I needed to write to get myself from point A to B, or flesh out an idea enough that I knew what I was trying to do with it.

While this means there’ll be a lot to cut in revisions, this method also means that everything I love about my story is still in there, too. At least for Draft 1. I have the characters who I can see changing from chapter to chapter between the original arcs I plotted last spring and the final pages of the draft. All the moody settings are there, too: the clammy mausoleums, frigid ice floes, labyrinthine archives, and temples built of stones that touch two worlds. All of the concepts that made me wonder if I was tackling something too cosmic, too abstract, or too ambitious are all there. Even if that is going to chance significantly in a future draft (and it probably will) it makes me happy that there is a concrete, finished, messy, perfect draft where everything gets to exist.

In short, I know now that my drafting process is slow, discovery-oriented, iterative, and messy. It also has to include elements of ideation and play, which often means noodling around with complex existential ideas and vague atmospheric vibes, even if these elements will eventually be cut or simplified.

So. The draft is now wrapped, and I’ve left myself with all the notes in my shadow outline and a rough revision plan. I intend to let the draft marinate for a few months while I work on other things, to gain some distance from it before beginning revisions.

Goals update

My energy to take on new goals in January varies from year to year. In 2023 I wanted to ease into the year with some rest and quiet, while in 2024, I started off feeling a bit more energized. A lot of my goals are more personal and internally focused, but I’ll share three here, because you’ll likely be hearing more from me on these fronts as I move forward with them.

1. I want to limit my engagement with social media.

I don’t want to give up social media, particularly Instagram, because it’s the way I stay connected to a larger writing community and the way I advertise my editing services. However, I want to figure out how to schedule posts using a third party program like Canva so it’s not such a high-touch activity for me this year.

The more I’m on Substack, the more I feel like this platform falls into the social media category as well. In favor of cultivating more focus on my actual creative work (i.e., more reading and writing vs. writing about reading and writing), I’m cutting back to one newsletter per month, with more frequent updates if something significant crops up.

2. I want to read more novels!

This sounds like a typical start-of-the-year sort of goal, but I’ve realized in the past couple of years that a.) a lot of my reading isn’t actually fiction, and b.) it’s become hard for me to finish a large number of books because of everything else I’ve piled on my plate.

This year I want to clear more space to focus on reading speculative fiction specifically. This is partially as professional development for editing, because I need to know what’s current in the genres I edit! However, those stories are the ones I like, and I’m not sure why I’m not reading more stories for enjoyment, to be honest. I finished four books over the holiday break, compared to eleven in the rest of 2023, which is pretty low for me. While I definitely had more time at my disposal over the break, I feel like this proves that it’s possible to make space for an activity I’ve prioritized - and one I actually enjoy. So, here’s to more reading for enjoyment in 2024.

3. I want to develop the capacity for deeper focus and exploration of topics I find interesting rather than “useful”.

I am not someone who naturally loves the research component of writing a novel, which feels a little painful to admit. When I talk to others about my interests, the standard ones come up: reading, writing, storytelling more broadly. Roleplaying games and cooking make an appearance, sometimes. I want to allow myself to explore a little more broadly, even if (especially if?) the information doesn’t present an obvious immediate payoff.

In that spirit, I kicked off the new year nerding out over ancient musical instruments on YouTube – what they looked like, how they sounded, whether anyone still plays them. This was probably inspired by finishing Black Sails and then watching soundtrack composer Bear McCreary’s interview about how he composed the theme song on a hurdy-gurdy. I spent a chunk of New Year’s Eve watching videos of folks play the hurdy-gurdy and the tagelharpa, a bowed string instrument.

This is partly out of a worldbuilding interest (in Project Alchemy, music is a source of mystical power), but partly because playing an instrument or singing was at one point a big part of my life and it feels good to return to that source of enjoyment. I’d like to engage in more of this kind of exploration this year. Music, language, and cooking are three areas where I know I want to start.

Discounted editing services

And now for a bit of business! As I mentioned on Instagram yesterday, I’m offering 15% off on all my developmental editing services for the month of January. This includes:

• Short story critiques: Just what it sounds like. I read your short story and provide you with some notes on its structure, clarity, prose, etc. and suggestions for revision.

• Manuscript evaluations: I read your manuscript and provide you with a letter detailing what I see as its strengths and weaknesses, as well as some general notes on character arcs, pacing, cause and effect, and other story elements. The letter will also include some suggestions to consider as you begin revisions.

• Developmental edits: This type of edit is more in-depth than a manuscript evaluation, and is likely the first kind of editing you’ll want to seek after you’ve completed a novel draft and done some self-editing. My deliverables include an edit letter detailing the story’s strengths and weaknesses, in-line notes on your manuscript, and a book map - basically a spreadsheet detailing your story’s structure and tracking various plot threads and story elements so you can get an easy sense of pacing, character arcs, and cause-and-effect. As with the manuscript evaluation, I’ll also provide suggestions and resources for beginning revisions.

You do not have to have your piece edited in January to qualify for the discount - you just have to book the edit! So if you know you’ll be finishing up a short story or novel at a later point in 2024 and want to get an edit on the calendar, you can book during January at the discounted price.

Feel free to check out the Labyrinth Editing website, and contact me at greta@labyrinthediting.com with any questions you might have! I’d love to work with you and get to know more about your story.

That’s all for now!

If you’ve made it this far, please enjoy this photo of the fountain pen ink my writing group bullied me into buying as a reward for myself after completing my draft of Project Alchemy. I can’t wait to see what kind of tales I’ll end up penning with it!