So there I was, two thousand zero zero, OUT OF TIME. I jumped off the Twistin’ Matilda train and hopped onto the next car, Black Matilda.
I had the points I wanted to hit, the directions I thought the characters would take and where the story would end up. Besides feeling a little rushed, I felt prepared.
But I wasn’t. I had no idea how unprepared I was.
It was a battle to get every single word down on the page. The characters didn’t want to do what I needed them to do but they didn’t offer any suggestions in return. Days spread into weeks and weeks into months.
The first novel took a little over five months to write. The second book only took twenty days. This one took two and half months for the first draft. I hated almost every minute of it. I had to go back to my original plan and reverted to using an outline to finish it. It turned out to be the longest story I had written yet.
After it was done, I had to keep in mind the words of Terry Pratchett, “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” It wasn’t a wasted effort.
So, all in all, I had written the longest story I had ever done. I also knew somewhere inside of me that there was plenty to work with on the written pages. And best of all? I had persevered. So a big one for me.
Jon Gray Lang.com 