First drafts: word dysentery

Writing first drafts of a story is probably the worst part of the writing process. I can pump out pages of material, and only like maybe two sentences and half an idea after a day's worth of writing. Every time I begin a new story, I second guess myself as a writer and a thinker. When I'm writing a first draft, I have to strike a balance: I know I'm at my least efficient when I'm writing that first draft, but I'm also arguably working through the most productive stages of the writing process. Once the story is put down on paper, it's a refining process: adding more content in some areas, stripping it from others, rearrange the order of events, and then falling in and out of love with the work enough times to constitute the whole relationship as abusive.

It's a rough moment. I hate it. Forcing myself to sit down and write is difficult. Everything is a distraction--food, web advertisements, the sounds on the street. I concoct stories about what my neighbors are doing when they're running up and down the stairs to their apartment so I don't have to work on concocting the story I'm writing in front of me. I'll cook meals, browse the internet, do bills--anything other than write. 

Today, I wrote three pages and decided to call it quits. They're rough. I hate the language, the pacing, and the structure the narrative took. But I know what I want to do when I sit down on the laptop and write up that section of the story now. I know that the first section of the narrative will be a much more focused conversation between Nettie and Calixte conspiring to avoid a return to what they once were, and that the next few sections will be lost in a haze of chloroform and german. I know that what's next is a conversation translated from French to English, and that an ultimatum will be offered, and that Nettie and Calixte will realize they've been captured by religious radicals. I know Calixte's purpose is grim, and Nettie's impossible, and that when they've lost hope, and despair settles in, that an agent of the Abyss will be compelled to visit, and that Griswold will walk into the trenches and wander their waterlogged lengths like they were a private garden, and when the Volk find him they will know he is something Other.

It's not pretty. My thoughts are still cluttered and the narrative itself is taking shape. But it is coming together. That's what matters at this point--making the narrative happen, and planting the seed for characters so that they can be nurtured in the second draft and the revisions.

One step, one day, one word at a time.