I’ve been a little quieter than usual on social media this last month, but I’ve emerged with some big (to me) news—I’ve completed a first draft of the novel I’ve been wrestling with for two years! It’s tempting for me to shrug off this milestone because anyone who has found themselves in a similar spot knows what comes next—a whole lot of revision. And I’m going to get there in a moment, but damn it feels good!
If you’ve been following me, you know I’ve been stuck in the murky middle for a long time. I didn’t meet my end-of-year goal of finishing, despite doing all the “right” things. In fact, I got so stuck that I set the project aside and worked on something else—and a month later, the ending arrived fully formed, screaming in my face. Poof.
Getting to the end of my novel brought relief—but it also carried me back eight years ago when I’d reached the end of another book, a memoir I wrote. Instead of relief, I felt emptied out. The realization that revision still lay ahead was overwhelming; the memoir had taken everything I had to give and I couldn’t imagine giving any more—the weight of revision felt crushing.
I’ve learned a lot since writing that memoir. This time, I came prepared, armed with an arsenal of revision approaches—and much lower expectations.
“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.” ― Anne Lamott
The shitty first draft that Anne Lamott coined in her iconic work Bird by Bird, is a well-known phrase in the writing world—in fact, it’s one I share with my students. But while I was able to see this clearly in short stories and essays, it was harder to come to terms with because of the sheer complexity of the novel.
It’s not like this process has been linear. I didn’t start at the beginning and write straight through to the end. No, for two years, I have wrote and rewrote, cut and replaced, developed and edited my way to the end.
But while I put a lot of time and effort into this first draft, it wasn’t until I got to the end of it that I could truly understand the story I was telling. And now that I can see that story in its entirety, and with clarity, I can see the threads I currently have and the threads I need to develop more. I can see what doesn’t fit, and what I need more of. I can see areas where I tried to be clever and areas that are vague.
Finishing the draft showed me what I’d built, and just as importantly, what still needs to be made more resonant. Getting to the end didn’t solve the book, but it gave me the bones of the story. Now, revision feelings like building muscle—strength, texture, and the capacity to move. It feels less like fixing and more like going deeper.
In my writing workshops, I talk a lot about going deeper—into a character’s inner life, into the emotional stakes of a scene, into the specificity of place. As I return to this draft, I’m applying that same principle to my own work, asking why and what again and again.
Finishing the first draft also helped answer the question What is your book about? A mentor once said if you can’t answer that question in one sentence, you have more work to do. And so I can keep coming back to that as I revise. What is this scene showing and how does that tie into what your story is about?
I think in our creative work, we imagine the end as relief, as arrival, as the moment everything clicks into place. But more often, the end simply hands us better questions. It asks us to return—to look closer, to go deeper, to be more honest than we were able to be the first time around. It’s like hiking ten miles to a summit—it’s exciting, but now you have to hike back, downhill, with tired legs, and so as you descend you go slower, pay more attention.
I’m already trying to approach revision with curiosity and a beginners mind. I’m not expecting the next draft to be perfect. I’m treating the work the way I try to treat my yoga practice, my routines, my days: by showing up, by paying attention, going a little more slowly, and adding muscle to those bones.
Revision, like any sustainable creative practice, is less about fixing and more about deepening. The end, it turns out, really is the beginning.
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What are you working on? Where are you at with your project?
Yay, Aurora! There is nothing like crossing that finish line, even when it's the beginning of something else. Congrats!