My book stinks (so far...)

I'm 6,000 words away from hitting the word count I want to achieve for my book.

There's just one problem.

My book... well... it stinks.

In January, I set a revised goal for finishing my book: instead of trying to knock the whole thing out, I'd work on completing a chapter a week through April.  By April, I figured, I should have reached my desired word count of 55,000 words and the neat end to my narrative. 

Armed with my outline, I began the year writing fervently, checking off chapters week by week and crawling towards my word count little by slow.  As I inched thousands of words closer to 55,000 one by one, I began growing more confident:  I was doing it!  I was going to finish my book!

By mid-March, all of my chapters were done.

I celebrated the completion of my book a bit preemptively, triumphantly finishing out the last chapter some 6,000 words shy of my desired word count.  No big deal, I told myself, I'd easily add in another 6,000 or so words as I went back and filled in the work.   Which I knew was my next step. 

I knew I had some heavy editing to do.  

Up until this point, I'd just been trying to get everything down on the page. 

But I wasn't expecting it to be this bad.

As I turned past the cart-before-the-horse acknowledgments and into my first few pages, I had a terrifying realization: my book is bad.

It's disjointed; it's self-serving. In places, to my horror, it's poorly written. 

It needs a complete and total rewrite.

I showed up to my writing group a few weeks back after my realization, unsure whether to tell them of my recent discovery. 

Despite my embarrassment, I came clean during our usual group check-in.

"I started reading my book... and it's terrible," I confessed. 

"That's normal," I was assured.  

Apparently, an awful first draft is a right of passage, nothing to be concerned about, and a completely normal part of the process.

That didn't prevent me from continuing to freak out,  taking a break, and walking away from my book for a few weeks.

The timing worked out well.  My book epiphany came right before we had a vacation planned to Florida.  I put my book away and tried not to think about it. 

But it's funny, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

In my time away I caught myself reworking paragraphs in my head, wondering what would happen if I opened with this section, could I delete that other, seemingly unnecessary part altogether?

How could I make it work?

Could I make it work?

Sometimes, in the quiet moments when I doubted myself, I'd give myself an out.  "You don't have to write a book," I reminded myself.  Noting that this is a completely voluntary project that I have taken upon myself. 

It would be so nice, I think sometimes, to just give up on the whole book idea and move on with my life.

If only it were that easy. 

In my book club we recently read Yellowface, and I've gone blue in the face telling my writing group about how great a book it is and how everyone should read it.

It's a complicated story, so I won't get into the details, but one of the things I loved about it is how the author described the unique wonder that is writing.

Of writing, the author pens:

"Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much."

I loved these words for their truth.  

To me, writing is real magic.  I find it transportive, healing, and all-knowing. 

For me, putting words on a page makes sense of an otherwise incomprehensible world. 

And I can't give that up, no matter how terrible my first draft was. 

And so today, with my tail between my legs, I returned from my hiatus and went back to writing group.  

I dusted off my terrible first draft, and I put all this down on the page. And as usual, I found that as I strung the right words together, things crystallized.  

Sure, I may have a shitty first draft... but the exciting thing is that I have a first draft!

From here, it can only get better. 

Here's to many more, hopefully much better, drafts to come.