I’ve been fascinated by the idea of fast drafting for a while. Turning off your inner editor and pouring out the first draft of your novel as quickly as possible. I think it stems from my love of NaNoWriMo. And here’s the thing – the year that I won, I wrote 30k words in 4 days. So I know that fast drafting should be possible for me.

How did I write 30k words in 4 days?

1. I had a list of scenes – not really an outline in any of the ways that I’ve encountered for outlining novels. It was more like a To Do List of scenes left to write.
2. I was more than halfway through the novel, so felt very comfortable with the voice, characters, world building, etc. (I used NaNoWriMo 2020 to finish the novel that I started for NaNoWriMo 2019).
3. Morning writing over Zoom with some folks I know gave me peer pressure to get started each day.
4. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and we were in the middle of a pandemic, so I didn’t have work or any other obligations.
5. I set a daily goal and once I met it I stopped for the day. I relaxed, I exercised, I did other things to replenish my energy well.
6. The spouse knew I was trying to win NaNoWriMo and left me alone during the day.

I’ll be honest, I also think ADHD was a big part of why I was able to do it. All of these things together allowed me to go into hyperfocus mode and let the words flow.

So why am I writing about this now?

Well, I have an idea for a novel that I’ve been mulling over for a couple months. It’s a retelling of a classic, so while that list of scenes isn’t written down yet, all of the big decisions about plot, the things I usually need to spend some time with the characters to figure out, have already been made. My months of mulling it over have instead been focused on figuring out characters who will work within this existing frame that I want to spend time with. It’s a contemporary romcom, so I don’t need to figure out the world building, life has already done that for me, and with a romcom I know exactly what tone I want to go for. I’m currently on a sabbatical, so work meetings and whatnot are not a concern. And I have lots of sources of peer pressure ranging from another morning writing Zoom to my writing group’s Slack.

This is the perfect opportunity for me to try fast drafting. I may never have this sort of confluence again of all of the things (I think) I need for fast drafting an entire draft, not just the end.

So here’s my goal:

1. June 23rd & 24th: put together a To Do List of scenes, write down all the character arc stuff I’ve been mulling over, and generally brain dump what I’m planning.
2. June 25th – July 10th: write 5k words per day until I run out of scenes.

These dates are based on a 80-85k word novel, but I tend to underwrite my first drafts so I may finish sooner than the 10th. And then I will have a shiny (and also very messy) complete draft!

Is this a ridiculous idea?

Perhaps.

Will the draft be terrible?

Possibly.

Will I be exhausted by the end?

Most definitely.

Am I setting myself up for failure?

Based on what I know of myself, this is actually very doable.

Wish me luck!