Drafts: Snow Glider!

It's finally done! I've finally completed a first draft of my arctic adventure book Snow Glider!

I honestly thought I was going to be working on this book forever. I first started it Freshman year at BYU, back in 2008. I clearly remember doodling during a boring Civilizations lecture. I drew a wolf running across a flat, snowy tundra. Then I decided it was a giant wolf, and I drew a girl riding on its back. From there it was, "Who is this girl? Why does she get to ride around a giant wolf? What are they running to? Or what are they running from?"

And a short story, "Nara and Kai" was born. I wrote it quickly my second semester, and left it alone. It wasn't great, but I liked it, and I wanted to do more.

I don't remember when I decided to turn this idea into a full-length novel. I don't remember starting to write it as such. But "Write Snow Glider!!" was suddenly at the top of all my New Year's resolutions, from 2009 to this year, 2015. I had several chapters finished before my mission, tackled it during two National Novel Writing Months after my mission (never finishing it, obviously), and just constantly had it on my mind. I didn't want to work on anything else until I had it done, but it just never got finished.

Not until I joined a writing group, that is.

I am so grateful for my writing buddies. We got together in February of this year, and I've been sending them Snow Glider chapters almost every week since then. Knowing that they expected me to send them a new chapter every weekend kept me writing when I normally would have given up.

It's been a crazy year. Old ideas were scrapped. New ideas, characters, and scenes popped up out of nowhere. I got worried that the NSA would think I was planning a murder because I researched weapons, hypothermia, villainous tendencies, and strangulation. And I got very, very stressed whenever I wrote myself into a corner or got frustrated with my characters.

Now, after five years of muddling with it and one year of really hard work, it's finally done! It's the most satisfying feeling, knowing I finally accomplished something that's been on my to-do list for so long. I can finally say that I've written a book. And I can start another one.

But first, I need to revise. Ugh.

This first draft of Snow Glider is way too long. Like 150,000 words and 500 Google Doc pages. But that's what happens with me and first drafts. I write too much just to get the story figured out. Now it's time to decide what's important enough to keep and then whittle it down. I'm hoping to knock off at least 50,000 words (an entire novel's worth!), and reformat it so it's a more manageable 250-300 pages.

I'm not going to do all of that right now. I'm SO DONE with this book. Am I proud of it? Yes. Am I still excited about it? No. It's just been on my mind way too much.

But I want to revise some important things while they're fresh on my mind. I'm going to try to get at least the major plot points redone before the end of this month. Then I'm going to finally set this thing aside for at least a year, and work on something else for NaNoWriMo. Yay!

I'm going to try to keep this next one under 50,000 words, so I can actually finish it by the end of NaNo, then send it chapter-by-chapter to my writing group and revise along the way.

What is my next project, you ask? The working title is Wash Maidlow (that's the protagonist's name). It's another adventure novel, but this one takes place in a fantastical, alternate universe Old West, where Wash has to deal with things like psuedo-centaurs and teleporting jackalopes while trying to rescue his estranged daughter.

That's all I know so far. It's going to be fun seeing where the story takes me once I sit down and write it for NaNo.