Okay, this may feel random to some of you, but it’s sort of a tradition I’ve got here. I’d like to interrupt your post-Thanksgiving shopping stress with a little tale of poverty and capitalism and hope.

And then… I’d like to make some of you an offer.

My partner and were full time aspiring writers in Los Angeles for many years. For a good chunk of it, she was far more successful than me, although I was bringing in bare-bones rent money with some of my film journalism and movie reviews, selling an occasional short story here and there. Even sold my first book for a very small advance. We weren’t living great, but we managed our balancing act and we were happy.

The problem with a balancing act, of course, is it doesn’t take much to make you fall. And once you fall, well… it can be really tough to get back up to that highwire. If you ever can. At one point the magazine I was writing for hit financial problems and got very slow about paying. We had a bunch of totally normal “unexpected” expenses—minor car repairs, sick cat, random bank fees. And then just like that… we were falling.

We were below-the-poverty-line poor for three solid years. And whenever I say that someone laughs and says “oh, ha ha, couldn’t afford the latest shiny toy?’ To which I say, no, we couldn’t afford food. We did all of our shopping at the 99 Cent Store. We stole toilet paper from the library when we went there to use the internet. Our phone was shut off. We couldn’t turn the heat on.

We were so poor, at one point Shane-frikkin’-Black offered to sit down with me over coffee and do an interview for the magazine and I had to turn him down. I made up some crap excuse rather than admit I didn’t have enough money to buy a coffee, and possibly not even enough for gas to get me across the city to where he was.

I literally didn’t have enough money to go to work.

Being poor is just ongoing tension. It’s a constant feeling of being trapped and powerless. Of being painfully aware of what you don’t have and what you can’t do. Of having no agency, as some might like to say.

And these days—hell, for the past decade or two—some folks have made it very clear that they judge you because of that. They find you lacking as a person because of your poverty. Because of what you’re unable to do.

All these feelings are even worse at the holidays. Because so much of the holidays is about giving, and when you’re poor you just… you’ve got nothing to give. It doesn’t matter how much you care about someone, it doesn’t matter how much you want to do for them. It doesn’t matter because you’ve got nothing.

And again… you can feel people judging you over it. At every office party or gathering of friends or family dinner. There are folks judging you for being trapped and powerless.

It really sucks. I know. I remember. I’m in a much better place now—thanks mostly to all of you reading this—but I still feel that clench in my gut any time my card doesn’t immediately go through at the register.

So if I can help some of you avoid feeling that gut-clench this season—the low I had to feel for those Christmases—I’d like to do it.

Here’s the offer. If you’re in a bad place and can’t afford gifts for your family or friends, shoot me note at my old business email– PeterClines101@yahoo.com. I’ve got about a dozen random books I’ll autograph to whoever you want and mail out to you so you’ve got something to give this season. Or I can send it to that someone else, if you need it shipped. I could even gift wrap it. No cost, no strings, just me helping you. I’ll send them out for as long as the books last. You can request a specific book but I can’t promise anything on that end. Like I said, random.

Oh, and I’ve got a few audiobook sets, too. The ones that are a wallets of CDs? If audiobooks work better, just say so. I still can’t promise which one you’ll get, but if it’d be better for your chosen person, let me know.

Just to be clear, this offer isn’t so you can recommend someone who might like a free book. You could do that—go get them a book. This is for those of you who need some help getting gifts for others. The people who are cutting back on everything, and feeling trapped because they can’t afford gifts for family or friends.

And look, every year a few folks read this and offer to chip in and help out. I’ve got it, but thanks. And hey, again, you can go be fantastic people all on your own. I guarantee, there’s a toy bank or gift bank or food bank or a homeless shelter or some kind of program within ten miles of you right now that could really use your offer of help–either actual help or throwing them a couple bucks. You could go help out in your own community..

Also… I’m doing this on the honor system, so if you’re just trying to save yourself some money or score an autographed book… well, I won’t be able to stop you. Just know you’re taking a potential bright moment away from someone who really needs it this holiday season and you’re an awful person for doing it. And you’ll probably burn in Hell before Krampus feeds your charred corpse to a squale.

Anyway, please let me know if you need some help.

Happy Holidays.

When I was writing up that halfway point post last weekend it struck me I haven’t really talked about drafts in a while. Obviously they come up here and there whenever I blather on about writing, but I haven’t gone over my process and what each step means for me.

Plus, this is kind of a perfect time to talk about it. There’s a lot of folks rushing to finish a first draft this month, or as much of one as they can (every amount is good!). I’m in the middle of a third draft, and I’m also batting a “finished” manuscript back and forth with my editor right now.

So let’s talk about the drafting process.

Right up front, though–”draft” means a lot of different things to different people. Technically it refers to the fact that, in ye olden times, you’d actually have to rewrite entire pages to fix a typo or adjust a line of dialogue because… typewriters. So you’d type up a page, mark it up by hand, and then type the whole thing up again. Possibly two or three times. Which was a lot of work and dedication when you’re talking about, y’know, 400 page books.

Today, thankfully, we don’t have to do that, so some people insist “draft” is an archaic term, or will flat out say they don’t do drafts but then explain their revision process. Because that’s really what we’re talking about. Revising and refining our manuscript again and again until it’s ready to show to folks.

Also, I’m going to try to cover a lot of things here, have a very open umbrella, all that, but the truth is I’m mostly going to be talking about my process. And there’s a really good chance my process won’t work for you. Not step-for-step, anyway. So take everything I’m about to throw at you with a grain of salt and don’t be scared to tweak any of it so it works better for you.

All that said…

I generally do five drafts of something before I send it off to my agent or an editor. That’s it. Each one’s a new document on my computer so I always have the last version to refer to if I want to check something or in case a cat walks across my keyboard and does something I cannot figure out how to undo. Ha ha haaaa but what are the odds of that happening? Again?

But it’s probably also worth mentioning that we all do—to steal a bit from Asimov—a zeroeth draft. We collect notes. We jot down ideas. Maybe we have a bunch of index cards we can move around or we do a full outline. And maybe that outline’s just a page or two but it could be twenty or thirty pages.

This early bit—the pre-draft—is very personal and we all have our own ways of doing it. And to be honest, it’s probably going to change a bit (or a lot) every time we start a new book. That first spark almost never hits the same way twice, so how we go from spark to fire is a slightly different process. And it might take weeks or months or even years. Again, different sparks, different fires.

But after that zeroeth draft, whatever form it takes, we’re ready to begin.

For me, first drafts are big, messy things. My only goal with a first draft is to get it done. Nothing else matters. Not punctuation, not spelling, not finding the exact right word or crafting the perfect cool line to end that chapter on. These things’ll matter eventually, but right now… I just want to finish this draft. Because I find it’s much easier to work on a completed draft, to fix existing problems, than it is to try to deal with all of it right up front before I start.

Worth nothing that I write a lot, but I also skip some things. I don’t want to lose momentum checking random facts or stopping to work out bits that turned out to be more complex than I first thought they’d be. If I know this chapter has to end with Ben getting a knife in the thigh, I might just put <BEN GETS STABBED> and come back to it later. I’ll probably have a better sense of things then, too.

Once I’ve got a solid first draft, I might take a day or two off (maybe poke at another project) and then start my second draft. For me, that’s saving draft one as a new document marked TITLE-2nd or something like that. Then I go through and start cleaning everything up. It’s time to actually stab Ben. Also to finalize Ben’s description, wherever it might come up. And look up some of those random facts, which will probably mean tweaking some sentences.

The real goal in my second drafts is to take the fast, messy thing and turn it into a solid, readable thing. All my plot and story bits should be worked out. I could hand this to anyone and they could read it, beginning to end, without hitting a weird gap or nonsense action scene or anything like that.

Doesn’t mean I am going to show it to anyone. But I could. It’s a finished story at this point.

My third draft is editing. Lots of editing. In On Writing Stephen King says his second draft is his first draft minus 10%. And while we don’t agree with the draft numbers, I do agree with the idea. Truth is, while we were enjoying all that forward-motion first draft freedom, we probably got excessive at points. Conversations ran on a little too long. Descriptions got a bit over-detailed. Action dragged out. I’m not saying it’s all bad—there’s a place for this sort of stuff. But that place probably shouldn’t be every page of my book.

So I go through the whole manuscript several times. I check all my spelling. I look for repetition and redundancy. Snip a lot of adjectives and adverbs. This involves a bunch of passes, which means I get to look at things again and again. And that’s when i realize i can cut even more words and sentences and paragraphs. Trim dialogue and beats and every now and then… whole chapters. And then there’s one last read-through to make sure all this random cutting and tweaking hasn’t created any new hiccups.

I’ve barely started this third draft of TOS –like, two days ago as I’m writing this—and I’ve already cut a few hundred words. And I’m only on my first pass through looking for excess words. I could do a whole post on that, if anyone’s interested, all the quick snips we can do to tighten things up. They add up fast.

At this point, I’ve got something fairly tight and solid. I’ve got a few folks I’ve known for many years, and now’s when I usually ask them if they’d be interested in looking through this new thing I’ve been working on. I think most folks have somebody like this. Maybe a few somebodies. Personally, I rarely want more than four or five opinions, and this is the only point I want them at. Believe me, there’ll never be a shortage of people willing to offer an opinion, and I don’t want to get buried in them right now because ultimately this is my story.

And during the month or so that they’re reading, I may do more notes on other projects, maybe outline something, or anything else that isn’t thinking about this book.

Once this small group’s gotten back to me with their thoughts and comments, it’s time for my fourth draft. This is another work-heavy one. Now I’m going through the manuscript line by line (again) with all their notes and taking a few notes of my own. How many people liked this? How many didn’t like that? Okay, nobody liked that bit.

Plus, I’m looking at it now after some serious time away, so I should have fresh eyes, too. In retrospect, wow, that’s some bad character-building. That dialogue is awful. What the heck was I thinking writing that?

Sometimes this goes fast. Other times… it’s really slow. The big thing here is me being open to what everyone else is saying. There will probably be some changes after this. I’ll also remind you of ye olde chestnut, if people are telling you something’s wrong, they’re probably right. If they’re telling you how to fix it, they’re probably wrong.

And when I’ve gone through and done all that, it’s time for my fifth draft. Now I read the whole thing again. Slowly. Carefully. I want to make sure the whole thing flows, that all of these tweaks and changes haven’t created any odd problems, or that I haven’t just left something incomplete. Like this paragraph, which was incomplete all the way up until my last read-through before I hit “publish.”

Worth noting at this point we’ve read through this thing at least five time, possibly many more with all those editing passes, and it’s very likely we’ve just become blind to some things. We’ve just looked at this page again and again and again, and we’re possibly seeing things that aren’t there and not seeing some things that are. Something I like to do here is switch everything to another font, because that change forces my brain to readjust. Now I’m much more likely to read each page than just look at it, if that makes sense?

And this is kind of it for me. Once I’ve hit save on this fifth draft, I’m done with the manuscript. Some people may find that a bit shocking—writing is rewriting, right?—but I find there’s a danger of ending up in an endless loop of rewrites-feedback-more rewrites-more feedback. Let’s be honest—there’s always something that could be tweaked and adjusted. If we don’t have a stopping point, we’re never going to start anything new.

Plus… I mean, there’s going to be more rewrites. My agent’s going to look at it, and he might have a few thoughts. If it gets bought, my publisher and editor will definitely have some thoughts. I’m going through that right now, like I mentioned up top.

And then hopefully, after all that… you get to read it.

Speaking of which, I need to get back to edits.

Next time… okay, look, we’re heading into the holidays. So there’s going to be the regular Black Friday post, probably a “cool things I read” post, something for the end of not-NaNoWriMo… and then maybe we could talk about cats and dogs.

Until then… go write.

Hey! I’m here encouraging you! FEEL ENCOURAGED!!!

Well, as I’m writing this we just passed the halfway point for the month, which means we’re halfway through The Writing Exercise That Used To be Known As NaNoWriMo (I’m working on a good acronym).

Hopefully you’re still going. Working on any project starts out fun. It’s great at the beginning, when we can just sort of be a firehose of ideas. We can spray clever dialogue and cool action beats and creepy moments everywhere. Cool thing, cool thing. cool thing, damn writing is easy!

Of course, the tough thing is then at some point—weirdly enough, often right around that halfway mark—all this stuff needs to start tying together somehow. I’ve got to take all those clever/ cool/ creepy ideas and make something coherent out of them. And that means this just became work! And work sucks! I’m pretty sure at least one of you is reading this thinking “I wanted to be a writer so I wouldn’t have to work!”

Plus, NaNoWriMo was this sort of group activity, and without it suddenly we’re all just… y’know, sitting alone in our rooms typing for no real reason. There’s no prize. No actual deadline. It’s easy to miss a day or two, think about how much work it’d be to get back into it, and just say “Ehhhhh… I’m done.”

But you don’t want to give up now. We’re on the downhill slope now. It’s half done. Yeah, it is. You don’t need to hit any set word count, you just need to keep at it. Again, this is more about doing it—sitting down and writing as much as you can, as often as you can—for the course of the month.

And yes… it’s going to feel like work sometimes. I wish I could tell you it doesn’t, that there’s a point when it’s going to be nonstop fun. But I’m not going to lie to you. Somedays you just have to sit there and glare at the screen and pound the keyboard until you figure out how Ashley believably ends up with the canopic jar when Devon didn’t’ know how to do it. But the cool thing is, it’s your work. You’re doing it for you. For your story. And nobody can write this story except you.

Also… this is supposed to be a first draft. Don’t worry about too many things lining up. First drafts can be gloriously messy things. Heck, my most recent first draft had a blank page with <KILL FRED HERE> on it. That’s it.

For now, just keep going. You’re more than halfway there. You, as the kids say, have got this.

And hey—my offer from last time still stands. For November, this is your writing community space. Post your achievements, frustrations, questions here and I promise you I’ll respond within the day with a high five, a commiseration, an answer, or some kind of encouragement to keep writing. I’ll check in every day. Maybe more often if I’m trying to avoid work. And you can respond to each other, too.

Next time… well, next time’s just in a couple of days. But since I just turned in edits on one book and I’m working through the third draft of another, I figure I’d talk about drafts and revisions.

Until then, go write!

It’s November! It’s been November for a week now! We all know what that means, right?!?

Well, it’s meaning a lot of different things than we all probably hoped it would. And I totally get it if that means you don’t want to think about writing today. Or tomorrow. Or until sometime in early 2029 or so.

But for the rest of you… let’s talk about National Novel Writing Month. Why some of you probably aren’t doing it this year. And why maybe you should just write anyway.

And I’m going to try to make it quick and semi-inspiring.

If you hadn’t heard, NaNoWriMo decided to shoot themselves in the foot a few months back and then decided to get both knees, too, because they had a few rounds left. They took on a generative AI company as a sponsor and then—loudly–announced they’d decided it was cool if you wanted to count AI-generated churn as your NaNoWriMo project. Not surprisingly, many folks were offended by this since the whole point of National Novel Writing Month was… well, writing. I mean, it’s right there in the title. There was backlash, commentary, discourse, and a lot less interest in joining NaNoWriMo. Go figure.

This is, understandably, depressing for a lot of of people. NaNoWriMo was an already-in-place writing infrastructure. It provided a solid, clear goal and a community where folks could share progress and encouragement and tips.

It also gave a sense of accomplishment and learning. As I’ve said many times in the past, the whole point of NaNoWriMo is just to make progress on a first draft. Maybe I make a ton of progress and get 60K words done. Maybe more. Maybe I only get ten or fifteen. The goal here is to make a serious effort to write every day, or at least as often as I can, so I can get an honest sense of how much I can write.

Because there’s always reasons not to write. Day jobs. Commutes to day jobs. Spending more time with our loved ones. Dealing with annoying problems and issues that crop up in our lives (I think I need to get my roof redone!!!). Having massive dread about the future. Just needing to get one decent night of sleep. Just one!

So NaNoWriMo was a great excuse to try to focus past all of that. It was a reason to tell friends and family “hey, not this week, sorry.” It was a chance for us to really focus on this whole writing thing.

But… do you really need some website for that?

You can set your own goal for this month. For any month. You don’t need NaNoWriMo for that. You can just tell your friends, “hey, I just really need to make some headway on this book right now.” I did that for years. And there’s so many folks out there offering advice and tips. Heck… you’re reading this on a blog with over fifteen years worth of them.

Look, if you want… I know I go back and forth about my posting schedule here, but if some of you want it, I’ll give you an encouraging post every week this month. Even Thanksgiving week. A little nudge (or maybe a good shove) to keep going, to keep doing it, because you can do this. You can have a contest of one and still come out of November in the same place you would’ve been with NaNoWriMo.

Heck, I’ll tell you what. For the month of November, this can be your writing community space. Post any achievements, frustrations, questions here and I promise you I’ll respond with a high five, a commiseration, an answer, or some kind of encouragement to keep writing. I’ll check in every day. Maybe more often if I’m trying to avoid work. And you can respond to each other, too.

Y’see, Timmy, it sucks that NaNoWriMo made some awful choices. But don’ t add that to the list of reasons you’re not going to get any writing done. You’ve still got everything you need to do this. You just need to, y’know… do it.

Next time—well that’s up to you. More encouragement? Or should I just do a usual post in two weeks about drafts or something like that? Let me know.

And until then… go write!