First Drafts: The March Madness of Writing

I love March Madness.  It's the only time of the year I watch basketball, but I just love it.  So many upsets and buzzer-beater victories, and ultimately, a crowned champion.

And with MarPrilWriMo just beginning, it got me thinking: First drafts are, in a way, like March Madness.  You're embarking on this potentially life-changing quest with an end that you (usually) know and want to reach, yet you know there will be massive obstacles along the way if you're characters are to achieve their desired ending.

There are also upsets along the way--the unpredictability factor.  Just as you never know who is going to win any given game in the tournament, in first drafts we're still getting to know the characters.  Dramatic changes can occur at the drop of a hat, upsetting your whole intended plotline.  Sometimes these changes in character or story are unexpected underdogs (figuratively speaking), and you end up rooting for them and figuring out a way to make them work.

This is one of the reasons I have always loved first drafts, and I'm falling in love with them all over again as I start my latest project for MarPrilWriMo.  So many things have happened already that I never could have expected, and it's like I'm meeting new friends.  It's magical and wonderful, and I can't wait to see what happens next (or to see how all these basketball games play out, for that matter!).

MarPrilWriMo

Over at her blog, Casey recently stated that she was starting a new novel. Well, I also happen to be on the fringes of a budding project, and have been wanting to crank out one of those really fun awful first drafts.

So what did we do, you ask? To which I wittily answer: MarPrilWriMo.

I'm sure most of you have heard of NaNoWriMo before. You know, write a novel (or at least 50k of one) in a month. We're not going to be quite as intense (shooting for 30k, which averages out to a grand a day), but it still will be a fun, commiserating, one-person-pushes-the-other-until-everyone's-achieving-more-than-they-would-have-on-their-own kinda way to pound out those pages.

If anyone ELSE cares to join in on the fun (not to mention, it'd be almost a third of that 100k we're all shooting for by year's end knocked out), we're starting tomorrow, March 9th and running through April 9th. Midnight to Midnight, I suppose, if you want to be all official about it. We could even potentially schedule some word wars and think up some dares such to make it really feel like nanowrimo. Join us. It'll be fun, I promise.

And see you on the MarPrilWriMo front!