#fdraft

IT IS TIME Y’ALL

Gathering inspiration from @nouveauweird and @klywrites posts, I am going to embark on my own Feral First Draft (#fdraft) starting tomorrow, June 16th. I will finish on June 22nd.

The Challenge

Speed write the full first draft of Roam in 7 days

That’s it.

How I’m doing it

No preplanning other than what’s already in my head

No editing

No deleting

All feral

Updates will be made using the #fdraft tag.

So, my week of feral drafting is over and it went exactly as planned!

Which is to say, I didn’t come anywhere close to finishing. But I knew I wouldn’t! This is my first real writing project in over half a decade, this whole pandemic thing has me questioning the entire direction of my life, and I knew that it was just an absolutely unattainable goal for me to reach in just a week.

But it made me start and actually get words down rather than just world building in my head! And its really given me a good understanding of just how long this first draft is going to be, and how much I am going to have to trim and re-work. It’s also really pushed me to think that Ive got some undiagnosed ADHD thing going on, but that’s- I mean, its whatever. I’ve written, in fits and starts, just over 10k words of plot-based outline. It began as a drafty draft but then the time crunch started to encroach and the speed picked up. So, 10k worth of outline, and I think that I’ve only just started to approach the first pinch point in the narrative (25% of the way through).

Anyway, It was a fun exercise. I would, for anyone else thinking of attempting it, suggest having an outline. I had no idea where these crazy kids were taking me, or what they would need before they could move on to the next thing. An outline would have helped enormously. I think I didn’t make one just because I knew from the start that I wouldnt actually be finishing.

This is a great challenge if you need a kick up the ass to just GO and DO IT if you are having trouble making yourself DO THE THING. It’s super low-stakes because at the end of it you’ll just have more words! I highly recommend it :D

Warning. To participate in a Feral First Draft you cannot want it to be good. You must only want it to be.

I’m like, 3 hours in and at this pace I will have to maintain this level of ferality for 5 years.

I need to go full tilt.

Word count: 1620