Feddit.onlineI wrote something, what's next? How was that supposed to go?
monkI've contemplated writing for years, never knowing how to begin. Then, in a fit of I don't even know what, I turned a freeform roleplaying campaign I DM'd into a book, which took me a year because I decided that I need to write it in two languages at once, yeah, and construct an in-universe one, because, I guess, "if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe". And followed up with a handful of short stories, because I got extra ideas in the meantime, which I also had to turn into words.
At last, once I ran out of things I wanted to say to the world, I've sunk a couple of weeks into TVTropes, trying to analyze what was that. Like, 300+ pages of random largely inconsequential tension without no antagonist, arguably no single plot-turning point happening on-screen, and, with a bit of a mental gymnastics, conflict-free altogether? What even is that, how is that called? Such analysis was, uh, interesting, I've learned that new under the sun, or, say, that in one of those languages SaidBookism is a norm, and in the other one it's a sin, and...
Something tells me that churning out text for a year and analyzing it after the fact for a month is not how one's supposed to get into writing? What's the, uh, conventional way of getting into it? Should I have started with short stories? What if I don't control when and what do I want to write? Am I supposed to solicit reviews of what I wrote? In general, what did I miss?
I feel like I've crashed through a fence meters away from an entrance gate I was supposed to use.
So. How did this go?
If your manuscript has been lying in a drawer this time, that is a great start. I recommend putting the text aside for as long as it takes to be able to come at it as if for the first time. I.e., you’ve forgotten enough of it to be surprised.
Maybe you’ve decided your first draft was sh!t? That’s also great. First drafts are supposed to be sh!t. Why? Because Hemingway said so.
Once you’ve put it aside and read it, you should be able to determine if you have something you could edit into a novel (that’s how sh!t blooms into gorgeous flowers), if you have something you need to add more structure to, perhaps via a synopsis, or if you have no ideas for what to do, what could be fixed and improved, or what is great. If so, maybe put it away again and write something new, perhaps based on what you found lacking in your process for this first manuscript.
But in reality, every author has their own process. Apart from what might be harmful, it doesn’t matter what that process is as long as it creates something you like and, as an added bonus, something other people like… all depending on your goals, etc.