A few weeks ago I finished the first draft of my new novel. This was BIG. For more than two years I’d stumbled through a string of false starts, and though I was trying to “trust the process,” some days that’s easier said than done.

Finally, finally, everything began to fall into place, and writing good prose felt effortless again. I also went back over the novel and story fragments I’d written in the meantime, and realized that it’s quality stuff after all–it just needs more time to marinate, the same way this idea needed two and a half years to make itself write-able.

As you know, I’m a big fan of Anne Lamott’s chapter on “shitty first drafts.” Just get it down, nobody but you is going to read it, you can fix it later. Along the homestretch the message on this postcard advertisement (for the Church Street Boxing Gym) became my mantra:

Truth be told, I haven’t worked this hard in a long time–not since I pretty much made myself ill finishing the first draft of Petty Magic. I’m sniffling my way through this revision too, but this time the only deadline is the one I’ve set for myself, and I feel downright exuberant. People often say that writing a novel is a little like giving birth, but I wonder if the comparison is apt for a different reason–when the birth is over, you forget how much it hurt, right? I find myself reading over my draft unable to remember any of the rough days, those times when the complexity of what I was attempting sent me into the library stacks looking for somebody else’s novel to escape inside. If you don’t count the incubation period, this manuscript came together ridiculously quickly–300 pages in four months!–and reading it over feels a bit like walking through a dream. But of course, you have to count the incubation period. I couldn’t have written it so quickly back in 2009.

work work work work work work (daydream about future book covers) work work work work work work (daydream about future book deals) work work

— Nova Ren Suma (@novaren) May 8, 2012

I love revising. I relish all this filling in the gaps, rejigging scenes, picking up the dropped threads, building timelines and calendars (so my characters aren’t aging backwards or talking of things that haven’t been introduced yet), and fact checking with TimeandDate.com, the Online Etymology Dictionary, and Dr. Google. Last week I spent a very enjoyable half hour in front of a microfilm machine reading the New York Times headlines from Sunday, November 28, 1915, and what I learned replaced a whole lot of XXXXXXXXXs in the manuscript.

More @nytimes ads from 1915: Smart apparel for stout figures–The Eager Internal Bath Appliance–Avoid that breakdown: Take Wincarnis!

— Camille DeAngelis (@PettyMagic) May 17, 2012

It’s still a long way from perfect, but I’m getting there, in my gleeful nerdy way. And it feels really, really awesome.