I recently finished the first draft of a new book I’m working on (the initial entry in a new science-fiction trilogy I’m having an absolute ball writing). It feels good to be able to say that, 102,000 words (or so) after starting in early January.

Creating the first draft of anything can be intimidating because the real task is figuring out how your end-product is going to be different from all the other things it could possibly be.

You could make literally anything, and in committing something to words (or ink or a business plan outline or whatever else) you’re choosing to make this one specific thing.

Choosing the right combination of whatever units of material you’re working with from all possible arrangements of those units requires some amount of vision, but also a huge capacity for failure and loss because you might choose the wrong arrangement (for your intended purposes), and because when you choose to do things one way, you are also choosing not to do them in an infinite number of other possible ways (some of which would no doubt better better, by some metrics, at least, than the path you’ve selected).

Your first draft is a block of marble, and making a block of marble out of thin air isn’t a trivial undertaking.

The process of chipping away at that block can also be a heavy lift, but ensuring you have something to sculpt and whittle in the first place—and ideally something that’s substantial enough to hold up to that kind of treatment—can at times feel like trying to lasso the wind or shake hands with water. You have to imagine something into existence, from whole cloth, and you have nothing to push against, nothing to stand on as you do so.

My work on this book is far from done, and I’m giving myself another three months to get it into suitable shape for others to read (as beta readers to provide feedback, before I do another several drafts).

But wow does it feel good to have something solid to work from: something to push against, to contrast with, to extrapolate from as a tangible starting point, rather than attempting to see what works and what doesn’t for a shapeshifting, purely theoretical concept.

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