The Riff Raff: Embracing the first draft frenzy

First drafts are elusive bastards aren’t they? It all seems so doable on Day One, when you’re fresh, well rested and optimistic. You have a very specific idea about where you want your novel to take you, but then, inevitably, a month later you’re pacing around your living room, too much caffeine in your veins and unwashed hair, staring at a wall covered in the scrawled spider diagrams, timelines and lists of a mad man, wondering when and where things got so damn complicated.

 Add in a lot of unexplained crying to the above and that was how I felt at every single stage of writing my first book. Crazed. Stressed. Worried. Very frowny (**see pic). I essentially panicked through every sentence and paragraph that the words I was writing were embarrassingly appalling. Lying awake telling myself it would never get published. That I was kidding myself to think creating a book was a possibility. I grumbled and groaned my way through the whole process, and that’s no way to experience the thing you’ve been dreaming about doing your whole life now is it?

Read my full blog over on The Riff Raff.