Finishing the First Draft: What I Learnt
When you think about the act of novel writing, what do you think the hardest part is? For me, it has always been, well, writing. I have spent the majority of my life daydreaming about projects, imagining my characters reenacting scenes I am yet to reach, and I have always viewed the path to a finished first draft as one that twists off into a labyrinthian, dark forest, then spiraling up to the fanged peaks of a looming mountain, and then, finally disappearing off into the unknown distance beyond.
This April I hit that first milestone a writer can reach: finishing the first first draft. Starting in the summer of 2024, just under two years, I have chronicled the journey my characters in ‘Consumption’ embarked on. And oh boy, was it amazing. With ADHD and dyslexia plaguing my brain, this achievement is very much The Achievement of The Year for me (and as a few people said, a good advertisement for ADHD medication). Previous attempts at other stories resulted in a few first chapters, the question of “what the hell am I writing?”, losing interest, and giving up. But ‘Consumption’ was different. I never felt tempted by other ideas.
For anyone who wants to write but is struggling, or simply curious about my personal writing story, enjoy all the dirty details of my two years of writing. Don’t worry, there won’t be any spoilers for ‘Consumption’!
THE STATS
‘Consumption’ began from a workshop I joined in summer 2024. I wrote a page of the first chapter, felt fueled by this idea, and officially got the writing-ball rolling on September 6, when I moved from Google Drive to Scrivener. I wrote those delicious words, ‘The End’, on April 30th 2026. The final word count comes to 221,922 words, roughly 635 pages long. My most used word is ‘the’.
‘When can I read it?’ To all my friends and family members who have enquired about reading my story, your eagerness flatters me, but prepare for disappointment. Unless you can decode dyslexia, my first draft is illegible. Its layout is similar to a map with one big ball of squiggly lines. ADHD made this development no surprise to me. This book won’t be ready for a while yet. And that’s okay. I don’t have an agent or a publisher breathing in my ear. Thank god.
I found it important to give myself the space for imperfection. My brain delivers ideas like a fully opened tap; the cup will fill up fast, the towels will start to drip, water seeps through my fingers. How this appears in my first draft was unfinished sentences, scenes stopping and jumping ahead, rewriting something I had just written, only slightly differently. I use ‘…’ to mark spaces in the narrative, where I need to return and bridge the gaps. Just so I can write everything down as it comes to me. Just so I don’t trip on a line or a slow scene that isn’t keeping up with my brain.
No one is reading this draft but me, so who cares how it looks? It’s my precious, secret story. This mindset has kept me going. My bedroom is a mess and I’ll clean it when someone comes over. Otherwise, I’ll leave it a mess. I know where everything is. Writing doesn’t need to be perfect. But, I have left myself with a hefty chore. Writing in Scrivener for the first time, it was a while before I understood the range of tools the software provides. My later chapters and my rewriting of chapter one uses comments everywhere to help future Natalie with the next draft. Be as messy as you like, but have a journal or a method to keep track of the chaos.
THE PANTSER
Remember how I said my novel was unfit for human eyes? I went into this story with no plan, no end goal, just loose scenes as flag posts to reach. Some of those flag posts, I learnt upon writing them, were nothing but a twig and a leaf. Not only is the literal writing messy, but the plot wavers and backtracks, like a dog let off their leash. For any readers or agents, this would be a problem, but for a writer just tapping the keyboard by herself, this was a lot of fun.
By having no plan, just ideas floating in my head, it gave me the space to explore multiple different scenarios without the feeling of claustrophobia planning causes. In previous attempts at novel writing, I felt restless having to follow the tight plot points I had made for myself, and like I would if I were worming through the tight windpipes of caves, I repeatedly gave up. Letting my characters naturally draw themselves onwards, exploring scenes and causing tension… for the first time my writing felt exciting and fresh to me.
There are a few scenes which will never see the light of day, but having had the chance to explore them, to see how my characters interact with them and what it adds to this world, felt important for continuing onwards. It wasn’t until chapter 26 that I fully planned my novel. I had finally understood who my main characters were and discovered their True Problems—in time with them realising it, too. I used Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat! Writes a Novel beat sheets and flew through the last chapters of my novel. I wrote ‘The End’. Even now, it doesn’t feel real. But I wrote a book! And pantsing felt like a great help in getting me through to the end. I never knew where the next chapter would take me, only aiming for that cool scene I daydream about, and without a need to reach a distant act, I had the chance to have fun in the present. As many people say, this first draft is for the writer finding out what this story is.
Currently, I am rereading and rewriting my first chapter. There is something incredibly refreshing seeing the early names of characters, with their now uncanny personalities and behaviours, compared to their chapter 30 selves. By organising and planning ahead, I feel like I am instructing them on where they need to go. Without plans, they felt like they were living, following directions they chose and growing across the pages. You may think I am exaggerating—I am a writer of fiction, after all—but in the early chapters of writing, I felt chilled at the way my characters took control. I would go in with a vague idea for a chapter, and they themselves would divert the plans and lead us into a new scene altogether. I was less of a writer and more of a stenographer. There were writing sessions where the keyboard stopped existing, there was no writing—my characters were loose and I was gaping at their wild behaviour.
I keep a heavy black journal to track the important details. One page for each character, like a passport, to document the age I gave them in chapter two, or their favourite food, things that don’t bind the narrative, but need to be consistent throughout. Otherwise, I let ideas float in my head. I might note a character as ‘angry’ or being an ‘insomniac’, but I like to explore what this means within the story itself. Matt Bell has a wonderful system in his book, Refuse to Be Done, where he will write ideas down into his manuscript, so the idea is fresh and immediately active. This feels more natural to me than to shepard characters into my whims.
THE PERSONAL JOURNEY
Earlier this year, I read Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, a fantastic non-fiction about the relationship between writing and the writer’s life. Out of all the non-fiction books I have read, this one moved me the most. I am not fully convinced Natalie doesn’t possess some godly power, because at points, I read a line in her book and felt a physical tug towards my writing computer, as though it was whisper-beckoning me from the other room.
Writing Down the Bones made me recognise an extraordinary aspect about writing. Firstly, whenever I stopped writing due to a personal problem in my life, it always coincided with points in the story when Cynthia was struggling the most, too. Of course, ‘Consumption’ to me is fast paced, and I never gave poor Cynthia a break, but it was at the peak of beats when I saw days slip by without writing. It was as though Cynthia was struggling with me, hanging on the precipes of death while I was laying in bed, upset about something, and she would laugh nervously and say, ‘And then what happens?!’ That’s when I realised what was happening: Cynthia’s character was showing me exactly what I needed to learn. All of my struggles was something Cynthia shared, too. Her actions, her emotions and their turmoil, were echoes of how I felt. What better motivation to write than that? To see what else my character has to teach me?
In Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, Brody suggests creating a “shard of glass” for your main character, a “psychological wound that has been festering beneath the surface of your hero for a long time” (pg. 14). For me, it felt like Cynthia was in my own shard of glass. Writing ‘Consumption’ was using this shard of glass to decipher what it was.
Maybe I was projecting onto her and using her troubles as a way to deal with my own, but I never intended Cynthia to be a character to reflect my own issues. When I made her, Cynthia was a quirky character adding a new dynamic to a group of vampires. Her personality and her problems felt fitting for a human girl raised by friendly, pacifist vampires. Subconsciously, Cynthia was helping me learn lessons I really needed to hear.
Don’t take ‘Consumption’ and Cynthia’s problems as a 1:1 ratio for my own life problems. I am perfectly emotionally and mentally well. Thank you, Cynthia, for teaching me how to deal with vampires.
EQUIPMENT
In an earlier blog post, I explained the spike in productivity after getting a writing journal. Each day, I log how many words I had written. My journal contains three small notebooks, contained by elastic bands. Because of the diversity of notebooks in one collection and the impermanence of their low number of pages, I am able to carry with me my writing journal everywhere as a constant reminder of how much writing I have done. I use it everyday, so the fact I hadn’t written is always present when using another section. The excitement of filling in a day’s progress and seeing the number gradually rise throughout the month pushes me along.
I also have a mood tracker alongside my daily writing journal, so if I am doing badly, I have proof to future Natalie that there was a reason why. And, I enjoy highlighting the numbers, red for 0 words, yellow for 1-999, and green for 1,000+. This acts as a mini reward for the ADHD mind, and helps keep me motivated. Get green today is easier than write an entire book.
INSPIRATIONS
Reading widely has been essential for improving my writing, but beyond that, so has straying from the written format. Jane Austen, Tolkien, and Naomi Novik has been a great influence in writing ‘Consumption’, but my heart is captured by works such as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Attack on Titan, Sinners, Van Helsing, Bloodborne and multiple The Legend of Zelda games. Though a few have direct correspondence to my vampire horror novel, such as Sinners and its refreshing twist on vampires and Van Helsing being my early introduction to the dark, vampire story, the other series are permanent shadows falling across all of my writing.
Staying inside my genre motivated me in a different way. It felt so close to what I wanted, that I felt frustrated when characters or plots developed in different ways. I have my ideal vampires engrained in me, my preferred temperatures of darkness and action perfected, that instead of feeling inspired, I craved my own story more and more.
Finishing the first draft is a major achievement, even if the story is far from over. I am not ready to celebrate the win; my goal isn’t to finish a story and get published. Over these two years, the act of writing has proven its importance to me. When writing ‘The End’, it didn’t feel like it was over. I am excited to continue writing and enjoy seeing my story grow each day.
Soon, I will post the first chapter of ‘Consumption’ for anyone curious about the story I have hidden away! I hope you enjoy, and stay creative.
