I FUCKING DID IT!!

I still can’t believe it – after last week’s post wondering if I’d get my detailed synopsis done by Friday, I’m ssooo happy to announce that I DID IT!! Even now, 12 hours later, I still have a smile on my face, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Ok so, let me take a deep breath and tell you why this is such a big deal. After all, this is just my book’s synopsis, not even a first draft and certainly nowhere near a finished book. When I originally thought of this idea waaayyy back in 2016, I thought I’d try a different approach to the one that I used to write Synthetica (which for those of you that are interested, was Roz Morris’ approach to writing). Looking back now, I have NO IDEA why I decided I’d try and change things up, given that Roz Morris’ book is legit the only reason why I have a published book to my name as opposed to another half-finished draft. Perhaps I thought I’d see if writing freestyle allowed the creativity to flow more or something, who knows. What I can tell you is that writing freestyle did indeed give me A LOT of ideas and scenes and notes over the years (my ‘fantasy notes’ file is currently standing at 37 pages and 21,094 words…far more than my current detailed synopsis) – but no first draft.

So, earlier this year when I decided to take my writing seriously again, I went back to Roz’s book and started from the beginning. I already had a vague idea of where I wanted the story to go, but I used her methods to get a timeline down and to start my detailed synopsis. Ever since then, I’ve been picking away at it whenever I can, but it’s definitely been a longer, slower process that it ever was for Synthetica. Part of that was my anxiety and fear of failure keeping me back, but part of it was also the fact that my life is a lot busier now – with a family and a dog, my writing time is now both a luxury, and something that I have to really work hard to protect if I want to take it seriously.

For example, even though I was still feeling inspired and excited to finish my detailed synopsis after last week’s successful writing session, I also felt really short of time this weekend. With a new puppy in the family, everything is a bit up in the air at the moment; I took my toddler swimming on Saturday and then yesterday I went out with my family while the Husband took our toddler to a birthday party, as well as us both looking after the puppy and our other dog (aka Big Terror). By yesterday afternoon, we were both exhausted. But I couldn’t get my synopsis out of my head. I also knew that I have an away day for work AND an interview tomorrow (woo!), so I’d probably be preparing for that today and would probably want a rest by the end of Tuesday. So, I either had to wait til Wednesday/Thursday and hope I had enough brain power left from the week to write – or I could just get it done.

Honestly, by 7.30pm last night I was falling asleep on the sofa, but I forced myself to at least try and write something to lessen the pressure on Wednesday/Thursday. That 100 words I told myself to write turned into over 3000. And after 2.5 hours work, I was DONE! Even now, after writing this whole blog post and excitedly telling my husband/my sister/anyone who’ll listen, I still can’t quite believe it. Seven years – SEVEN YEARS – and I’m finally ready to start that first draft in earnest. Don’t get me wrong, I have started several first drafts over the last few years, but now that I have a roadmap of where I’d like to go, I’m feeling much more positive about actually finishing the damn thing.

I’m under no illusions that my book is now ‘ready’, and that the first draft (ad subsequent drafts) will now be plain sailing. I already think I want to change the beginning of my novel – although whether I’ll do that this week and quickly cut and paste a new version of my detail synopsis into a new doc to fit my new beginning, so that I can say it truly is done, or whether I’ll leave it for a few weeks and assess if my new beginning will fit into my novel as a whole, I’m not sure yet. I’m gonna get this interview out of the way tomorrow and then see how I feel. Either way, once I’ve left my detailed synopsis to marinate in my brain for a while, I’ll then go back to it and begin my first draft. Ideally, I’d like to make good headway on it before Christmas, but we’ll just have to see how it goes. I’m not going to put insane pressure on myself, no matter how badly I want this book finished. Sometimes life just gets in the way, but that’s ok – if there’s one thing I’m learning as I get older it’s that time truly does have it’s own time and place, and if you keep going, you’ll get there in the end.

Have a great week folks, and good luck to everyone who’s finishing off their NaNoWriMo projects this week!

Do you write a detailed synopsis before beginning your first draft? If so, how have you found them? How’s your current first draft looking? 

Z xx