AQATWW: End Year Six
The first draft of Alexandra Quick and the Wizard War is complete. 388,858 words, 66 chapters.
I cannot overstate how messy and bloated and inconsistent this draft is. I know I say this about all my first drafts, but look at those numbers: almost 400K words! Printed as a standard Young Adult trade paperback, it would be over 1500 pages!
Obviously, I have worked more consistently than I did during the seven-year gap before I published AQATWA, but it was a struggle to finish this draft. There was a point in 2021 where I really thought I was going to finish it by the end of the year. I thought that again late last year. Then I thought "Well, at least I will finish it by the end of January." Well, now it's almost the end of February. I have learned I should not even hint at deadlines or being done until it's done.
In order to push through some of my writing blocks and plot holes, there were times when I just... ignored them and kept writing. This was useful in getting more words written, but it's a struggle for me. When I hit a plot hole, or something that I know doesn't make sense, it feels like a brainteaser. I want to solve it, and I spend days (sometimes weeks) trying to figure it out. This is no way to finish a book, but despite not being a true "pantser" I have never been able to outline everything in advance either. When I sit down and write, the words flow, and if I let them, I can get a lot written. It's when I get "stuck" trying to figure out how to resolve a problem that the words stop. So I made an effort to just keep writing as if I were some kind of NaNoWriMo pantser. It is hard to describe how much this bothers me; it feels like driving over a roadblock and continuing down the road in a car with shredded tires.
Definitely a Lawful Plantser
And of course, there are Big Questions that have to be answered in this book, and if not in this one, then in book seven, and I am running out of space to punt them. I don't want to write myself into too many corners I have to write my way out of in the final volume.
So now the work of rewriting begins. I have subplots that went nowhere, dangling threads unresolved, entire chapters that should be cut (I just am not sure which ones yet), and entire arcs with major plot holes. I have scenes repeated in different chapters because I wasn't sure where the scene should happen. I have chapters that end with no transition to the next one because I wasn't sure how to get there; "Go back and figure it out later," I told myself. Well, now I have to figure it out.
I don't even like the current ending.
Eventually, when I think I have wrestled this disaster into a "final" draft, I will call upon my trusty beta-readers who have been with me for many years. I am not even going to ask them to look at this first draft, because nobody should inflict a horse-choking manuscript like this on someone for multiple rereads. Then the next round of revisions will begin.
I will leave you with a few pictures. I am not completely abandoning Poser, but I have been playing with Stable Diffusion a lot, and I am getting better at prompting, and after multiple attempts, I've created an AlexandraQuick model that usually generates a consistent picture of Alexandra. (Usually. It still only gets her eye color right half the time, and occasionally adds extra arms or randomly turns her blonde.)
Alexandra wishes she looked this cool.
Alexandra wishes she looked this hot.
Still Photobashing with Poser
Poll AQATWW Cover Poll
Spoiler (Sneak Peek at the Prologue)
I cannot overstate how messy and bloated and inconsistent this draft is. I know I say this about all my first drafts, but look at those numbers: almost 400K words! Printed as a standard Young Adult trade paperback, it would be over 1500 pages!
Obviously, I have worked more consistently than I did during the seven-year gap before I published AQATWA, but it was a struggle to finish this draft. There was a point in 2021 where I really thought I was going to finish it by the end of the year. I thought that again late last year. Then I thought "Well, at least I will finish it by the end of January." Well, now it's almost the end of February. I have learned I should not even hint at deadlines or being done until it's done.
In order to push through some of my writing blocks and plot holes, there were times when I just... ignored them and kept writing. This was useful in getting more words written, but it's a struggle for me. When I hit a plot hole, or something that I know doesn't make sense, it feels like a brainteaser. I want to solve it, and I spend days (sometimes weeks) trying to figure it out. This is no way to finish a book, but despite not being a true "pantser" I have never been able to outline everything in advance either. When I sit down and write, the words flow, and if I let them, I can get a lot written. It's when I get "stuck" trying to figure out how to resolve a problem that the words stop. So I made an effort to just keep writing as if I were some kind of NaNoWriMo pantser. It is hard to describe how much this bothers me; it feels like driving over a roadblock and continuing down the road in a car with shredded tires.
Definitely a Lawful Plantser
And of course, there are Big Questions that have to be answered in this book, and if not in this one, then in book seven, and I am running out of space to punt them. I don't want to write myself into too many corners I have to write my way out of in the final volume.
So now the work of rewriting begins. I have subplots that went nowhere, dangling threads unresolved, entire chapters that should be cut (I just am not sure which ones yet), and entire arcs with major plot holes. I have scenes repeated in different chapters because I wasn't sure where the scene should happen. I have chapters that end with no transition to the next one because I wasn't sure how to get there; "Go back and figure it out later," I told myself. Well, now I have to figure it out.
I don't even like the current ending.
Eventually, when I think I have wrestled this disaster into a "final" draft, I will call upon my trusty beta-readers who have been with me for many years. I am not even going to ask them to look at this first draft, because nobody should inflict a horse-choking manuscript like this on someone for multiple rereads. Then the next round of revisions will begin.
I will leave you with a few pictures. I am not completely abandoning Poser, but I have been playing with Stable Diffusion a lot, and I am getting better at prompting, and after multiple attempts, I've created an AlexandraQuick model that usually generates a consistent picture of Alexandra. (Usually. It still only gets her eye color right half the time, and occasionally adds extra arms or randomly turns her blonde.)
Alexandra wishes she looked this cool.
Alexandra wishes she looked this hot.
Still Photobashing with Poser
Poll AQATWW Cover Poll
Spoiler (Sneak Peek at the Prologue)