4. Myth: If you just keep drafting, eventually you'll write THE ONE.

My writing journey up until 2020

Hi! If you missed the previous post in this series about my writing journey and myth 3 that any agent who will respond to you is “good enough,” then you can read that here…

Now onto drafting in search of the Holy Grail of stories…

(If you don’t get the reference to this Monty Python joke, then you can scroll down to the bottom where I’ve included the clip for you 😉)

Characteristics of THE ONE book that every writer dreams of creating include:

• A novel that excites you the whole time you’re working on it.

• A book that agents and friends will beg to read and won’t be able to put it down until they’ve finished.

• A work so great that it will bring in mountains of money in publishing sales and will practically market itself!

The unspoken implication here is that everything else you write is really just a kind of preparation for hitting that golden book Holy Grail …

Or in other words…everything else you write is basically shit that you have to clear out of the way to make room for THE ONE.

…Which also ironically sounds like a bunch of horrific dating advice I’ve also heard.

Further down in this post, we’ll get to a teaser about the project I have committed to publishing first, (some good did come out of following all these bullshit myths, I promise) but here’s how I got there…

Here’s how that belief worked out for me:

(2017)

I was becoming more active on Twitter and making friends with people who were doing what I really wanted to do, writing novels. That’s when I heard them talking about this thing called NaNoWriMo.

For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is a project where writers of all ages motivate each other to write 50,000 words in the month of November alone. They offered prizes like discounts on writing software, but mostly the point was to see how much you could write so that you could tell your friends about it.

I’d never done such a thing, and I was at the time, a terrible planner. However, the event appealed to the competitive side of me, and I wanted to get a discount on Scrivener (a prize at the time).

Thus, I jumped on the bandwagon with these newfound writing pals. Posting about how many words we’d written each day was a great accountability motivator. Plus, it brings people together when you start talking about what you’re working on and comparing word counts.

Naturally, I made no plans, did no research, and just jumped right in to figure it out as I went along.

Yet what I DID have was the old email I’d saved from that agent with some pointers, and a whole lot of new insights from not looking at that old novel for the last 5 years.

Thus I jumped into rewriting the whole first book I’d done word for word, AND adding a new setting.

🚩DISCLAIMER: I never participated in the NaNoWriMo forums. I chatted about it on Twitter instead. Having a separate forum for this activity seemed a bit like a WTF time-suck activity when I was already using all my free time to draft every day! I didn’t do NaNoWriMo in the year when all the unmoderated forums self-combusted and burned down the whole fucking NaNo reputation at both ends and everywhere in between. You can read all about it on Reddit if you’re really curious. Basically, the key takeaway is don’t run unmoderated forums (and especially NOT) with minors on them.

🎉The good news is, I won NaNoWriMo!🎉

I loved the camaraderie of doing this with a group of online pals and inspiring each other. By the end of that year and into the next, I got feedback from my very first alpha readers, whom I met through Twitter. These people loved my book, like seriously, and they made me love it even more. Plus, they gave me helpful ideas for improving the story further.

Some of them did publish or now work in publishing!

I’m so grateful for all the writers I did meet on Twitter who encouraged me.

Sending a warm “Thank You” to:

• J. Elle, who published fantasy and dark academia novels

• Erin Vere, who published sci-fi comedy, dystopian, and fantasy romance novels

• Ashley Reisinger, who’s now an assistant literary agent at Triada

• Bethany A. Perry, who published horror and sci-fi novels

• Kelly Andrew, who published YA dark academia fantasy and horror novels

• Clementine Fraser, who published dystopian and paranormal romances

• L.A. Cunningham, who published horror, short stories, and comics

• Paul D. Nolan, who published short stories.

• Brian C.E. Buhl, who published an urban fantasy/mystery.

• Brian Palmer, who’s now a professional book editor

• Shannon Ferretti, who’s published fantasy short stories

🤗And of course, thank you to everyone I may have forgot to mention.🤗

So what was the big problem with this myth that held me back?