Erin Lodes

How I Finished My Novel is going to be an ongoing blog series detailing how I finish this freaking thing. I know, I know, you could probably tell that from the title…

So let me tell you a little bit about this novel I’ve been working on. A bit of backstory, if you will. I know, I know, never start with backstory. But in this instance I feel it’s warranted.

This novel started as a NaNoWriMo novel my senior year of undergrad. For my senior honors project, I had chosen to write an entire novel. A bit more ambitious than I realized at the time. So I wrote the whole first draft in November, got to 50k, and then spent the next couple revising it with my advisor. When I graduated I had what I thought was a good start to a book. Boy, how wrong I was.

After graduation I fell upon revisions with a vengeance. When I thought I had something ready, I sent out a few queries. I look back at this now and laugh like crazy. I didn’t know enough to know what I didn’t know and what I didn’t know was a hell of a lot.

While I was waiting to hear back, a friend I’d gone to school with who was starting her own editing business on the side asked me if she could look at it and then I could give her a review. At the time, the novel had four different POVs and was told as a collection of connected short stories (I’d been in thrall with Winesburg, Ohio during the original drafting…). My editor friend told me to cut out my main character and use one of the other POVs as the main character.

I drank several bottles of wine that night.

Then I went back to it. I did not cut out my main character. I set about trying to fix the reasons my editor friend had detailed for why the reader wouldn’t connect with her. (It was the way I’d written her.)

I got a new draft. Cut it down to three POVs. Still wasn’t happy. So I set it in the virtual drawer for a bit. I worked on short stories. And I got some books on novel structure and plotting and editing and how to write a good novel.

Then I went back to it. I cut out the other two POVs and changed it from third person limited to first person. I cut out all the side plots and tried to get back to the core story I wanted to tell. And now I knew enough to know what I had wasn’t where it needed to be but I was still trying to figure out how to get it there. And I was in the midst of doing this when I ran across this guy named John Adamus. @awesome_john on Twitter. Seriously go follow him. He’s an editor and a writing coach and just a general awesome guy.

I was getting regular awesome good stuff from following him when he ran a contest for a free first chapter analysis. I won! Which never happens. I was so excited. And after his incredibly brutally honest and helpful Skype session, I knew. This was it. The tipping-first-plot-point. The transition. The door from my first act to my second act. My point of no return.

I went out to my husband, who had been keeping the puppy from distracting me during all the awesome advice and critique, and I said, “I want to keep doing this.” And he said, “Go for it.” And I stressed about money for a bit. And he said, “It’s what you want to do. You have to think of it as an investment.” And he was right. This is my dream. I’ve got some amount of talent and skill and a hell of a lot of drive. I should invest in myself. So I did the thing.

I’ve had two more coaching sessions with John. (Which I’ll talk about during later posts.) And after six freaking years of working on this novel, I finally feel like I’m on the right track to finishing the freaking thing.

I know I can put a decent sentence together. Hell, a powerful paragraph. A great scene. A good short story. Maybe even a chapter that will make you want to read on. But a novel? I haven’t done that before. So I found an editor, a coach, a mentor. Someone with a hell of a lot more experience than me.

So, how did I do the thing? I got fucking help, that’s how.

Anyway, that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?

PS – If you want to check out what John’s all about, which I Mt. Everest-highly recommend, go here.