hi good to see you uh if we haven't met before i'm elliot i am a writer i have this youtube channel
where i talk about writing every once in a while i feel like it is only fair of me to give an update
to let you know how my current writing projects are doing because i know how
desperate you all are to read it i'm like george r martin over here so how is it going
it's going slowly it's going slowly i'll say that much about a year and a half ago summer
2020 i made this video you know during the height of the pandemic we were fearing for our lives uh
i had short hair back then i hinted that i was gonna start a new project a big project
it was it's a novel i thought you know starting a novel would be a good way to get me through the
monotony of lock down life and it did a year and a half later here i am uh well i'm happy to announce
that as of now i've i've just finished the third draft i just finished the third draft this is
it's it's a big deal so i in addition to this update i would also like to share
my process to getting to the third draft now and my strategy going forward
not really a strategy just my hope my hope for the future so how did it all go how did i start it
and how did i get to this point right now which is just the third draft so the first step
in this novel writing process was to get the first draft down and i wrote the first draft freehand
in these two notebooks here half of these two notebooks contain my brilliant story
it's the first draft it was just all about getting it done i find that sometimes when
i'm working on a big project on the computer i have the tendency to go back and edit
and edit and never really get to the end on a notebook where you just you can't really go
back to edit just kind of keep going forward that was actually really good for me and i felt that
that actually helped me get to the end of the story that i wanted to get to so just had to
keep writing really and i tried to write a little every day it took about five to six months of a
page or two sometimes five pages sometimes just one page sometimes none at all which leads me to
the next step i took a little break immediately after doing this but not that long maybe a week
or two but when i came back to it i started the next part which is transcribing all this
onto the computer so i could actually start editing it properly and that was my first
complete read-through of the story and it was actually nice once in a while i don't know
if nice is the right word i i surprise myself sometimes with how brilliantly i craft a story
no but you often feel like your first draft is really bad but sometimes i mean a lot of the time
it is but sometimes you surprise yourself and you write something that you're you're
honestly shocked about and it's like well the first time you're reading it it's like this
this is not so bad i don't know i'm my own biggest fan it's a curse really that was uh the second
step which is transcribing it onto the computer i try to get it down as close to word for word as
possible obviously if there are spelling mistakes if there is like egregious grammatical errors
or if i want to change a name i i don't copy it exactly i make those fixes
as i go when i spot them there's that step uh transcribing i don't really count that
as a draft i count that still as a first draft but when i'm done that i put it aside for a bit
i think i sat on it for maybe a month or so and then i went back and i did a complete read through
just reading through the story and just making notes in my google doc just making a comment
highlight a thing make a comment not really the time to go in and edit it i want to read
it through completely and get a sense of the flow of the story get a sense of just
the characters and the plot are things making sense really where the plot holes are and just
marking it as quickly as possible even just like sometimes question marks like what do you mean
there just so you can revisit it later sometimes i highlight a whole paragraph and i go cut
um i don't need to make that decision right there this is just meant as a read through that took
about a month to do just to read through it uh i tried to do like a chapter a day with 23 chapters
i believe so that took about a month then i go in and i work on the second draft the second
draft i kind of have a sense of how the story is gonna go now i've i've read it a few times i
know where the trouble spots are i know where i'm lacking details i know how the ending has ended
i now in my head i know how the ending should end so the second draft to me is connecting everything
it's trying to make like new game and says it's trying to make it seem like you know what you
were doing the whole time by getting to the end in a logical way so to me the second draft is
making the ending make sense draft you can't really work on the second draft until you finish
the first draft and you can't finish the first draft until you have an ending so it only makes
sense that the second draft is really focused on making the ending make sense so that was what i
did there after that i took a little break honestly i took a little break i worked on
my four short stories project that i did in the month of october you see that video here so that
was a nice palette cleanser so the second draft is all about addressing the comments i had during the
read-through and dealing with the ending then the third draft is all about focusing on the beginning
dealing with the characters motivations and fixing those dang plot holes there are so many of them
there's just so many so yeah that's where i am and that took me a year and a half and i
feel like my story is finally starting to take shape finally starting to make sense
around the third draft so if there is anyone out there who is in the thick of it like i am
i understand how you feel i'm with you this is as good as any point to give up right
if this novel is a beautiful painting i am still sketching out the image i'm making sure all
the proportions are right i'm redoing things i'm erasing stuff i haven't even touched the paint yet
and there's just a lot left to do well i'm gonna take a little break from this novel and work
on some short stories my goal this year is to write at least eight short stories in addition
to working on this novel um to try to publish them as i've done in previous years i feel like
that is always just a good challenge getting your work out there i honestly i just enjoy the process
of making something and then seeing what it could do i i find that just a fun thing to do to begin
with so i look forward to working on these short stories and of course the fourth draft i want to
keep working on this and the goal of the fourth draft is to get it to
a quality where i'm comfortable sharing it to another person to read probably my wife
so i i want to not give her garbage to read that's honestly so there's a it's that's honestly a very
high bar uh that i've set for myself i got i have standards i don't just let my wife read nonsense
i do i absolutely do but uh she's very supportive so that's where i am with my creative writing
i really look forward to soon sharing some of them with you a lot of them that i've written
they're kind of rather out and about trying to get published or they are just not ready yet so
hang on tight for that i am doing my best and yeah i really can't wait to
get something done but you're kind of in the middle of everything and you're kind of just doing
everything day to day and it's a long process and that is why i it feels nice to share this with you
because um oftentimes it feels like you're just working on something over and over and over
every day is exactly the same just like this whole pandemic lockdown thing i'm it's actually been
nice to work on this to kind of escape from the day-to-day life so my initial plan is working so
there's that thank you for dropping in and just checking on me checking to see
how i'm doing i'm doing good once again i'm elliot i make videos about writing
and the creative process if that interests you or if you just want to check in on me
hit that subscribe button it helps a lot i really appreciate it keeps me going i wish
you the best with your writing projects and uh yeah let me know what you're working on i'm
actually very interested to know so please do all right i'll see you real soon