Candlewick Podcast Interview with Kate DiCamillo

Candlewick Press has a podcast where the speak with Candlewick authors about their craft, their visions, and their processes.

Their interview with Kate DiCamillo has two bits of wisdom that I'd like to share:

@16:28

"So, the way I work is I do the First draft, which looks like something somebody who is certifably insane wrote it.  It has very little coherence and it's just kind of like a rough map of where I'm going to go.  So I get that out and I don't pay any attention to how it sounds or anything. 

Then I go back, after letting it sit for a bit and do a Second draft, which does has some shape.  Now I'm still getting the story right and the words aren't exactly right. 

Third draft, I know the story a little bit better and now I can concentrate on the words more.

Fourth draft is where I'm actually happiest because it's just like I'm fine-tuning it but nobody else has seen it yet, but it's really starting to become itself.

So then forth or fifth draft is where I'll start to let people who I trust look at it.  It's not done.  'Is this a thing?' is a question I always ask myself. 'Does it seem real and necessary?' And that's the only question I want them to answer and if not, if it's not those things, then it's not working.

And then I'll do the Sixth draft and that is usually when it goes to to my agent, and then from my agent to my editor."

and

@ 15:15

"There's that thing that Anne Patchett talks about where you have this beautiful vision in your head, this beautiful book that you're going to write, and the minute that you put the first word down on the page you compromise that vision.  You can never capture that beautiful thing that's in your head. And so it's like letting go of the dream of perfection and just doing the best you can do."

Completing a First Draft

Finishing one of these bangles only means
there are more waiting to be made

There was a blog entry today over at The Alchemy of Writing that asked about our reactions to being finished with a first draft.  The author of the entry described his elation at the moment he completed his draft, being overcome with a rush of nervous, active energy.

Me, I'm a bit different.

I'm about a day or two away from completing Draft One of the first of several MG Steampunkish stories.  My Draft Zero has been printed out and those pages have been marked up with my trusty red pen and I'm in the process of keying in those changes.

So how do I feel? Elated?  Nah.  Filled with energy?  Nope.  One step closer to being done?  Yes--but with qualifications.

As I've mentioned before, my wonderful wife is a jeweler.  She makes beautiful gold and silver jewelry using precious and semi-precious gemstones.  Shortly after we were married she convinced me to try wire-wrapping.  I did and eventually started making bangles like the one you see above.

My wife and I had very different approaches to completing a piece.  To my wife, each piece was an individual work of art, and as such, was never completed.  Her favorite line about this is, "An artist never finishes a piece, they merely surrender it."  To me, the bangles were not individual artworks, they were something I made in a one-mass assembly line process.  Completing one bangle simply meant there were more bangles to make.

(Yes, they're pretty.  Yes, they were reasonably priced.  Yes, we sold a lot of them.  Yes, I'm appreciative of every bangle I made and sold.  And, yes, I'm very glad I haven't had to make any of them this year)  (knocks wood)

My response to finishing my Draft One of the Steampunkish story isn't quite as bleak as my reaction to finishing a(nother) bangle.  I do see the story as something much closer to a work of art than something cranked out on the assembly line.  However, it is still something I'm referring to as a Draft, not as a finished manuscript.  There's the problem I have with the first five to ten pages, there are my questions about the end, there's a serious uncertainty about the two chapters that lead up to the climax...

In other words, it's one step closer, but I recognize that it's just that: a step.

I'll send it off to my beta readers early this week.  As responses start trickling in, I'll send out my list of follow-up questions.  When those come back, I'll review each of them, make some decisions and do some further editing.  Then it goes back out to a few of the beta readers for their take on the changes.

One step in an entire march of steps towards getting to a point where I can "merely surrender it" with a reasonably clear conscious.


How do you respond to completing a First Draft?  Any sense of elation?  Pride?  Do you have any celebrations?  I'm curious to know what you do.


-- Tom

Draft Zero

When I was getting my writing sea legs, I had serious anxiety about producing a First Draft.  To me, a First Draft was something monumental.  It was a completed work that, while still needing revision, had sufficient substance to warrant being called an actual Draft.  Who cares if it was the First of potentially many, it was still a First Draft.

Then I learned about Draft Zero.

"Draft Zero" is a phrase I picked up from reading Cherie Priest's (author of "Boneshaker" -- a really great book -- and many others) LJ blog.

I don't remember how long ago I read a post from her LJ using the phrase (consulting The Google, the earliest reference in her blog I can find goes back to 2006) but it was exactly what I needed: a phrase that represented a completed draft, but one without the pressure of that word First.

(While consulting The Google, I found an interesting, alternate take on this idea.  Over at WriterUnboxed, Ann Aguirre wrote an entry where she described a conference where Nora Roberts was asked about her writing process. In her answer, Roberts described how she writes a "discovery draft" (where she learns about her characters).  In many ways she's describing a Draft Zero, a draft where things happen but not as formally as a full First Draft)

I write and revise as I'm writing.  Passages will stick in my head for hours/days if they don't work and won't let go until they're revised.  Changes or additions that occur to me later in the story need to be immediately fixed/added to an earlier section of the story so the continuity is right, otherwise it's like a record with a skip in it playing in my ear -- one that mixes with the nagging worry that I won't remember to fix it properly until a beta reader points out that something doesn't make sense.

My Draft Zeroes likely resemble many people's First Drafts.  They're a completed story, start to finish with divided chapters and a clean story arc.  They remain, however, a Draft Zero until I've printed them out and done an exhaustive line edit.  Or two.  (Or three)

When I'm ready to contact my beta readers, that's when I'm willing to call it an official First Draft.

What are your first drafts like?  Do you do a Discovery Draft?  Do you revise as you go along or save that all until the end of our first draft?  I'm genuinely curious to know how other people write.


-- Tom