How NOT to Write a Novel PART 2: First Draft Dumpster Fire

The Old Man Played Three—which eventually became First Ride, but that’s another story—was born out of grief. I hadn’t truly written in years and didn’t know how to get back into it. Why wasn’t I writing?

That’s yet another story.

In October of 2015 I lost my dad in a car accident, and sometime after that I started drafting a book that began with the death of a father. In the beginning, this is all I knew about the book that would consume my next decade:

·       In his final days, former biker Jason Young plotted a trip across the country for his sons.

·       Brothers Jase and Graham Young hated each other, for reasons that hadn’t been revealed to me yet.

·       Graham’s girlfriend Lindsey was to join them on the trip.

·       Jase was the hero; Graham was the antagonist.

·       If they followed Jason’s map, the boys would receive a six million dollar inheritance at the end.

Painstakingly plotting the course mile for mile took a long time. Writing the meat of the story took even longer. I finished the first draft at the end of 2020, cranking through the final chapters in the hour a day I worked while my husband took care of our baby.

The first draft was a massive 170K word beast of a travel novel that focused more on the destinations—oftentimes places I’d been—than the development of the characters or the central love stories. Still, I thought I had something great and emailed the giant file to my sister and a few friends and waited with bated breath for them to tell me how awesome it was.

They didn’t.

Some didn’t read it for years. Others read it right away and were super nice in their critiques, but admitted that it wasn’t going to be a best seller, or anything (I mean, shove a knife through my heart, why don’t you?)

Looking back, I accept the first draft for what it was—a dumpster fire that never should’ve left my computer. I was just so damn excited to have a whole book, the book that was going to finally make me a published author, that I couldn’t wait to hear from completely unbiased readers (which, of course, friends and family canNOT be unbiased, no matter what you think) that I had struck literary gold.

Which, of course, I hadn’t.

Yet.