A Monstrous War, the 1st Draft

Before I get into how I wrote the first draft of A Monstrous War, I have to give credit where credit is due. I owe a lot to Stephen King's On Writing. Whether or not you're a fan of Mr. King, if you're a prospective writer, this book is a must read. It gave me the structure, guidance, and the kick in the butt I needed to sit down and write a book.

I started writing A Monstrous War on October 12, 2009. At first, I resolved to sit down every Sunday and write for 8 hours. I wanted to write 2000 words a week, and in a year have a first draft done.

That first Sunday, sitting in the sun room of my grandmother's lake house, hearing the water outside, it took me around three hours to get down 2,000 words. It went much quicker than I had hoped, so I decided that every day I'd sit down and write a minimum of 1000 words, more if I was on a roll.

At the end of the first week, I had 16,000 words. I again revised my plan. I was going to get serious. I would write 2,000 words every day, just like Stephen King and Isaac Asimov.

And I did. Some days it was easy. If the road was clear at 2,000 words, I'd keep going until I hit a bump. On my best days I'd cruise to 5,000 words and when I was done I'd sit there in utter disbelief that I had done it. Other days it was like running a marathon. I'd be checking word count every 200 words, wondering if the damn thing was broken. But I never gave up until the 2,000 words were done.

All the while I fought doubt and worry. Was it any good? I thought some of it was, and believe me, I'm pretty hard of myself. Was it going to be a book? I mean, what if I told the story I wanted to tell and it was only 100 pages? That isn't a book.

I hoped to hit 70,000 words. I didn't try to hit it, I just told the story I had in mind and when I sailed over the 70,000 word mark I breathed a sigh of relief.

I learned a lot of things about myself writing the book. I learned that for some reason, once I had gotten my words in the new ideas would come. I'd get up from the desk then run back in half a dozen times to type notes into my outline document.

I learned that when you work every day, the book takes over your mind. You're always running back to the laptop to make a few notes. In the shower, things start coming and you fight to hold onto them, running to the laptop dripping with a towel held around yourself.

Did I always know where I was going? Well, I knew how the book ended before I had committed a single word to the paper. I am an ending oriented writer...I know where my characters will end up. Most of the time I start with the ending, or its clear to me early on how things will end.

While I knew the ending, sometimes I had no clue how i was going to get there. But I knew my characters, and I knew what they wanted. Knowing that, it became clear what they would have to do and where the book would go.

On 12/10/2009, I finished the first draft. If you write 2000 words a day for 60 days, you have a 120,000 word book.