new beginnings

for for the first time in a long time, i'm working on a new book

welcome to the iron veil, the section of my newsletter in which i update you on my latest project’s progress. if you’re only interested in book updates, you can unsubscribe from all sections except “allison saft” here.

---

We’re back with another new series. In this one, I am chronicling the drafting process of my next YA novel.

Each time I sit down to write a new book, I find that I have forgotten how the one before came into existence. All that remains are fuzzy impressions of how it went: the enormous pain of A Dark and Drowning Tide, the lightning-in-a-bottle, cozy, clear-eyed joy of A Far Wilder Magic, the straightforward fun of A Fragile Enchantment; the frenetic, impassioned haste of drafting Down Comes the Night, followed by the long but rewarding struggle of revisions; the quiet determination of Wings of Starlight, built page by page during a difficult year. Without a record of the process, each of these books becomes mythologized—and also flattened. This time, I want to record how I did it, or at least how I felt over shorter periods of time.

So: here’s what I did last week.

this is called “pacemaker” :) highly recommend!

I gotta get one thing out of the way: this graph looks way more impressive than it actually is. Sometimes between February and June, I wrote 12,600 words for a proposal. Beyond that, I’d had the opening vignette in mind since 2014. And while both the tone and atmosphere of those 12,600 words was almost completely wrong, I was able to salvage and repurpose most of them. The big spikes: pasting scenes I’d already written into the document. The small spikes: days spent tinkering—trying to excise whatever gave me that feeling of vague disgust when I looked at what I’d wrought. I try to do new things with each book. Sometimes, I think those attempts take me away from what I actually want. It feels like there’s a fine line between stagnation and knowing who you are.

Otherwise, the largest-scale change was adjusting it from first person to third person. I tried, really, but I have to go back to the old me. I also deleted and rewrote the entire first chapter, which is pretty par for the course for me. RIP little rat creature in the convenience store.

The book feels almost real now, or at least more real than it did when I was frantically scrambling sell something. This is my recurring issue: I let the business side of writing drown out the artistic side. I have to resist it even now. I cannot allow myself to think ahead to things like covers, or what sorts of things might or might not happen for it. I cannot rush the first draft for the sake of getting it into production, or to “move onto revising.” More and more, I’m learning that I actually do like revising as I go. I love spending days on a scene—pausing a YouTube video to add a line of dialogue or an image that occurs to me; lingering over a single paragraph for hours; or watching a documentary because I wanted to know if a detail I’d added was likely or not, considering. Despite a looming deadline, I’ve permitted myself to slow down and go where I’m drawn. It’s been good for me. Wild, what listening to yourself does.

---

Today and yesterday, I’ve been avoidant. I’ve hardly touched the draft at all. I can’t exactly pinpoint why. It might be fear. This idea feels bigger than me. I’ve found myself thinking things like, Is this any good? Or, Am I choosing the right scenes? Or, You only have one shot to do this idea justice. Have you chosen the right shape for it? Will you have time to execute it well, given the demands of this industry? Or, You thought that opening was the best thing you’ve ever written, but no one else seems to feel that way. Or, Did writing A Far Wilder Magic feel like this?

It’s the last one that hurts the most. That book haunts me. I need to believe that it can be outdone, or that I can love like that again. I still worry my best work is behind me. Then, I remember this book I’m writing is not a book yet. It is 10,000 words.

At least it finally has a working title.

---