On the relationship between speed and quality

Or, why on earth I would attempt to draft my next novel in one month

Happy end of October, and happy almost-birthday to me! While the rest of you are stuffing your faces with pilfered Halloween candy from your roommate’s / office’s / kids’ stash, I’ll be… stuffing my face, too. But also celebrating one more year around the sun and hoping for many more.

My sister and I on my 3rd birthday

Life moves quickly— a feeling that hits me hardest on my birthday— but publishing does not. So, not one to twiddle my thumbs, I’m about to write my third novel.

Starting November 1, I’ll be participating in NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month), in which writers around the globe (why, then, “National”?) attempt to write 50,000 words during the month of November. To hit the goal, I’ll have to write roughly 1,700 words per day, or around eight double-spaced pages.

For some, that’s a modest goal. Stephen King writes 2,000 words a day for 90 days straight to crank out his (very long) first drafts. Jesse Q. Sutanto (author of Dial A For Aunties) recently wrote 40,000 words in 3 days in order to finish a book by her deadline.

For many of us, writing 250 pages in a month feels… inconceivable. Unachievable. Terrifying, even. But aside from whether we can write this fast, the real question is: should we?

Here, some anecdotal evidence (what, Witty, no hard stats?).

I wrote my first novel slowly.

I set a modest goal of 3,000 words per week, and there were several months (when my father died; when we drove across country and then moved to Italy) in which I allowed myself to write very little or not at all. In the months when the words did come, I weighed them, lingering on the perfect way to express a thought. I revised my words while the novel hovered in its first-draft stage. I began each writing day by rereading (and meticulously revising) the passages I had written in the previous session. It took me 10 months to write the first draft.

What I didn’t appreciate at the time was just how little of my first draft would remain through the final revision. Whole story lines, characters, and chapters would be cut entirely. The hours I’d spent agonizing over those first-draft words were wasted.

To write my second novel, I fast-drafted.

I aimed for 1,000 words a day over the course of a summer, taking very few days off. I plowed ahead without editing. I finished the first draft in 2 1/2 months. And my revisions took me the same amount of time as they had for my first novel.

Here’s the thing. The first draft is like a prototype. You’re telling yourself the story— shaping the first idea of your new product. Afterwards, you look for feedback— either from alpha/beta customers (in the case of a prototype), or from yourself, when you read the draft, before you start your first revision. The feedback loop is crucial, regardless of how long you’ve spent on your first draft.

Fast drafting forces you to get the ideas on paper.

There’s no time for hesitation. You put the words on paper because you have to. Writer’s block doesn’t exist— it can’t. Some of the words you write will survive, and some will be cut, but you’re giving yourself permission to get the bad ideas down, knowing the good ones will follow. Knowing that without first roughing out the block of marble, you can’t chisel down to the David inside. (Too much? Sorry, former Florentine here.)

One of the many David copies in Florence

So, I’m giving it a go. 50,000 words in the month of November.

Want to join me? NaNoWriMo welcomes everyone. My username is jwitty - find me and we can cheer each other along. Not your cup of tea? Cool, I get that. Wish me luck from the bleachers. I’ll report back in my next newsletter.

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Recent Publications

It’s been a fallow-ish period, as I’ve been busy re-revising my manuscript and querying agents, but I did publish this interview with debut novelist Sara Lippmann in the Chicago Review of Books. She was funny and forthright and my favorite kind of interviewee. Her novel, LECH, is so carefully crafted.

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And that’s a wrap!

I’ll be back in December with my favorite books of the year. Until then, happy Halloween, may you write like crazy (or not), and I’ll see you on the other side.