AKA: Lots and lots of Google comments and sticky notes.
I've been thinking about this a lot the past week, as I continue chipping away at my capstone and (admittedly) not making the progress that I wanted on my revisions to Draft 4. I've been in grad school since June 2021 and have been working seriously on this version of my manuscript also since June 2021, which is also when I started my job as an academic advisor and also took a summer internship scanning archival documents for the Miss America Association.
No, I didn't plan to everything all at once, and, in hindsight, the amount of couch naps and caffeine needed to get me through the day should have told me it was a really awful idea. If it hadn't also been the height of the pandemic and every single thing I did (except Miss America) hadn't been virtual, I definitely would not have survived. That much socialization all at once, plus my crazy-long commute to and from Rowan? Shudder.
But I actually wouldn't change a thing. Because that summer, I learned that the start of so much new-ness (with relatively little IRL socialization) does wonderful things to my introvert brain. I got this beautiful surge of creativity. I could write 3,000 words in a day and scan documents in a locked room for 6 hours straight and read memoirs for my Gender & Religion class--some of this all at the same time, mind you. The scanner wasn't exactly fast and was very prone to jamming--and then still be able to log into class that night on Zoom, and then rinse and repeat, all summer.
I thought I could keep this pace up in the fall, when I'd finished the first draft of my manuscript (the 105,000 word behemoth that I thought was perfect). And, largely, I could. I was only taking one class and the professor had decided to make it virtual, due to her own concerns around the virus. My work schedule was less hectic than the summer, because my internship was done, and I'd already been acclimated to working as an advisor. In between appointments, I wrote down thoughts I had on post-its and stuck them to the inside of my laptop: "Consider condensing these characters down into one." "This feels too insta-lovey." "Your worldbuilding here is not consistent." "TOO MANY DESCRIPTIONS."
Without even looking at my manuscript, I could identify problems and solutions at work, and then workshop them when I returned home before and after class. (And sometimes, admittedly, during class. Please forgive me, Dr. Sullivan. You know I love you.) I kept up this frenetic pace until November, when I finished the second draft and started getting beta readers. And when my first two betas came around with their feedback...let's just say I was workshopping until April, when I had two classes this time, one of them in-person.
And then, I was workshopping queries and gathering my agent list. I knew there were problems with my manuscript, but they felt both big/unsolvable and super freaking tedious at the same time, so I hoped that it was one of those things only I could see, because I spent a solid year staring at it. I'll get into my query process in a later post, but for now, the only takeaway from this is: my work on my manuscript still didn't slow, but redirected.
Grad school didn't slow, but redirected. My program had...issues. As an administrator and a student, I found myself on two different sides of these...issues. It was emotionally draining and physically draining, plus at every turn, my queries were a solid no. My carpal tunnel and neck problems came back full force from the stress, and my anxiety ratcheted up to an eleven. Most days, I felt like I was going to throw up. I say this not to brag that I finished a second manuscript--a sequel, which will remain unedited until I begin querying Book 1 in earnest again--under these conditions, but to say that my work became a kind of emotional solace. Waiting was unpredictable. Writing a sequel was even harder than writing my first manuscript, because it meant that continuity and overarching plots were now concerns. But it became something (the only thing) I could control this summer.
Fast forward to now. A beloved professor and avid YA fantasy reader had asked for my manuscript back in April, but I told her "no" because I was waiting to hear back from agents (and I secretly did not want this very critical person, whom I admire very much, to see my manuscript's flaws because then...I would have to fix them. And I felt at that stage in my process that it was very much someone else's problem).
But with every agent sending me a very polite "no thank you," I realized it was time. I sent this professor my manuscript. She dropped her research to read it in 4 nights, and sent back such beautifully thorough comments. At this point, I had been willing to consider her an alpha reader...I'd been through two betas and three drafts. I did have one big glaring issue at the end of Chapter 1 (my first ten pages, AKA, my querying sample), but I had honestly put down my lack of success to poorly written queries and the subjectivity of taste.
Well, the Chapter 1 issue was the first thing my professor latched onto (among other things).
At the end of Chapter 1, Ais makes an accidental blood sacrifice to a shadowy being who turns out to be Cailleach, a goddess older than creation itself, and one of the major wheels upon which Book 2 turns (even though Cailleach was totally gumming up the wheels there, too).
My professor couldn't quite understand what Cailleach was doing in there. There were also unexplainable narrative elements (holdouts from past drafts that I kept hanging onto because "it's a sequel thing, you wouldn't get it yet!"). The actual wheel upon which the plot of Book 1 turns wasn't introduced until halfway through, making it feel murky and a little inconsequential. And I had totally dropped the ball on the other half of Ais and Emrys's heritage: explaining their father's past at all, beyond name-dropping like everyone will understand who Donn, Milesian god of death, is.
Now, this is not to say that she hated the manuscript itself, or that I deserved to go straight back to the drawing boards, or that drafts 1-3 had been for nothing. She actually felt the manuscript was "fully realized," with well-developed characters whose diversity is refreshing and whose emotional arcs are beautifully drawn. Seeing as this was something I'd majorly struggled with in drafts 1-2, I was pleased.
She also felt that fixing these problems could be as easy as just revising those sections. Oh boy, was she wrong.
I had a sense, as I read over my professor's comments, that the hardest work I'd done on the manuscript yet was just beginning, because unlike previous drafts, there were many things here that worked. Things that I couldn't just scrap. And the bad things were just too darn well-entrenched, due to work I'd done in previous drafts integrating those specific things. In my edits, I had to be more strategic than I had ever been. I knew I was in for it. And, at the same time, the hardest work I'd done in grad school was just beginning: my final semester. My capstone.
But I have survived. And how exactly did I do it? And how could you do it, too?
I bought a planner and I make a schedule every day. This is not a hard and fast schedule, but a guideline that I try to keep balanced. I've been in my job long enough to understand the ebbs and flows. September is a light month. I work a little slower. I do a little less. I fill the time I might've been meeting with students with research/readings for graduate school. October is brutal. Mid-October (registration week) makes me cry. So I work really hard on scholarship and/or writing before Hell Week, and then I stock up on apple turnovers and I eat them at my desk and I cry. And I do not feel bad that I'm falling behind because, hey, I got really ahead last month!
I plan ahead. I am no longer spontaneous. I clean on Saturdays. I grocery shop on Sundays and I change the cat litter and I clean their food and water bowls. I eat leftovers most days of the week and protein shakes in between. I eat one dessert whenever I want each day, but it's usually at lunch. I plan my outfits and my laundry days (always a Wednesday). It's not sexy, but it keeps my mind off the day-to-day things so it's freed up for creative energies and/or scholarly energies.
I ensure that every day, I am either writing or thinking about writing. On good days (and less work-intensive chapters), I can edit a whole chapter. Most days, I can't. If I can edit 4 chapters a week, I consider that good. I recognize that my previous pace is no longer sustainable, but when it is, I write and write and write. For example, last Friday, I did two chapters in one day, a massive victory.
I also plan my revisions on weekends. Before I even began work on this draft, I had a plot notes document (my ally from the start) up with proposed revisions. I workshop on this document. I read chapters ahead of time and make comments as to how certain things can be more effective. And not just things from my beta readers. How to tighten up character arcs further, or make the emotional payoff in Ais/Saoirse's relationship hit better, or how to make my true villain, Varik, more memorable.
I am kind to myself. I am a sensitive soul. I'm also currently struggling with carpal tunnel and neck pain/stiffness that makes it difficult to write. I am a migraine sufferer whose migraines are blissfully under control recently (by some miracle). And so I understand that if I do not meet those needs, I'll be pretty incapable of doing anything else. I used to be a superhero and power through it, but I've learned that if you don't stop, your body will stop for you at like, the literal worst times. So I build in time to exercise and meditate and go for long walks (my favorite!) and while I do these things, I let my brain go where it may. And if it goes to writing, great! And if it goes to the fact that I really, really want Thai food, that's also great. Then I go buy a green curry and dig in to my research.
And that's my thing. Maybe it's not the best thing, but it works well enough to keep me upright and semi-functional.
Happy drafting :)
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