- Print out the whole draft, marveling at all the words you conjured out of nothing.
- Read through it. Make notes as you go along: mark where the structure is illogical, where the characters are acting OOC, cross out the stream-of-consciousness filler, and don’t forget to add lots of question marks in the margins.
- Despair.
- Go back to your original document. Start making changes.
- Fiddle around with the structure until it’s more logical and/or interesting, starting with the first chapter.
- Flesh out scenes. Write 500 words of descriptions you skipped the first time.
- Delete 1000 words of that same chapter.
- Despair.
- Force yourself to move on to the next chapter, even though the previous one is still hella flawed.
- Repeat 5-9.
- Get lost in the chapter with the worst structure and content so far. Stare at your piece of shit document for hours on end.
- Despair.
- Move scenes forward in the novel. If you build it up more slowly, it will be better and more logical. Of course, now you’ll have to write a lot of new scenes in-between.
- Scenes, new scenes. You can figure this out.
- Get a drink.
- Or two.
- Stare at the document for several more hours and hours until your eyes are burning out of your skull.
- Force the words out, all words, any words. Scenes are made out of words, right?
- Read what you’ve written the following day. Delete 75% of the chapter.
- Despair.
- Repeat 14-20.
- You’ve been working on the same chapter for two weeks, haven’t you?
- Is the prospect of the remaining 23 chapters giving you panic attacks yet?
- Twenty-three, twenty-three, will the end ever come in sight?
- Why did you ever write a novel?
- Why did you ever think you should be a writer?
- You should have gone to medical school like the other smart, privileged kids.
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