messy first drafts (+ a writing excerpt from project adfbs)

I conceptualized the mess of Project adfbs on March 29th, 2024, only to scrap it two months into writing. It wasn’t speaking to me until I changed the ending which, inevitably, changed the whole story. But I thought my old outline would be good enough, so I didn’t bother making a new one.

It was a horrible idea.

I live on outlines. That is the only way I’ve been able to write over 10k words in a single day. But because I really had no idea where I was going to take this story, I decided I would figure it out as I went along. I liked the idea because it was fresh and malleable, and I could do anything I wanted with it. Such a broad idea made me just as excited as I was overwhelmed. First drafts are messy. They are ugly and so unstructured that they fall into a convoluted pile of mush. And that’s what Project adfbs is now. Mush. And I will have lots of mush stuck underneath my fingernails before I can mold it into something I am proud of.

Luckily for me, I love writing second drafts. That’s where I can experiment with prose and character arcs, but I’m still early enough in the process to not have to worry too much about making it good. This is where I can add all my metaphors that only make sense to me. Where I stand now, project adfbs is at 69,800 words. I expect it to rise to about 80k-100k during the second draft. (Word count will rise by a lot, considering I didn’t write two chapters towards the middle and left *write this later* all over the manuscript).

And so to celebrate finally finishing the horrible and monstrous first draft of project adfbs, here is an excerpt that, although unedited and quite messy, captures the essence of the novel.

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Just sit and wait, Father had told her. And so Lucille did, a body preserved in ice until Father came with his pick and chipped it all away. He stood next to a white haired man with wrinkles deep enough to look like someone had taken a knife to his face and carved them in.

“My name is Warren Vasiaire.” The stranger lifted a gloved hand to his chest. He wore a black suit with a rose in the breast pocket, like he was getting married. “I ask humbly of the Divine Healer to return my youth.”

Father smiled wide enough to make him look like someone else entirely. “Grant it to him, daughter.”

Warren took off his glove and put out his hand. Lucille took his hand, feeling the knobby bones on his fingers. Then, as each bone shifted, growing stronger under her touch. She felt it in her chest, a squeezing of her heart, a constricting of her lungs. Her next breath felt simultaneously like it was her last and her first.

The white of Mr. Vasiaire’s hair blew in an invisible breeze. When it stilled, the wiry strands were a clean black. He couldn’t have been older than twenty five.

Lucille looked from his hand to his face– his impossibly smooth face. He was younger now, at least two decades so.

To be young again was unnecessary. It was nothing like what Monotta said she wanted when she created Lucille. She hadn’t saved the sick or healed the injured. This was a luxury, one that Lucille didn’t even get herself. Why should he be young twice when she could not even be young once?

Next, a man approached Lucille with a basket of jewelry and dried fruits to lay at her feet. It wasn’t the payment– he’d already discussed that with Father. Only those who could afford to pay Father’s price were even allowed into the city hall in the first place. This was an offering. This was for Lucille only.

The days went by quickly, and by the fifth, something was different.

Her nights of tears were replaced with giddy tossing from Father and Monotta’s praise. She was restless for the next day to come to impress them. Khoyes didn’t just accept her– they worshipped her. She woke to gifts at her doorstep and passed crowds chanting her name. She was their Divine Healer.

She lost count of the people she’d saved. But Father and Monotta kept track, and when she asked them in the car, they smiled ever so warmly.

“Almost enough to make you a god,” Monotta said.

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Thank you so much for reading!
- Ali