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I finished the first draft of No Humans Involved this morning. It came in at 61,888 words. That word count is a little thin for a mystery novel. Revision will beef it up significantly. My first drafts are always light on setting and description, which means that even if I cut existing material, the second draft is usually longer. In addition, I need to add a subplot involving a second viewpoint character. I wasn’t certain that it would enhance the story to have it, so I left it out, but now I know that it really is crucial. That will add some heft to the word count, too. I plan to revise the manuscript this spring.

Before I move on to a new project, it’s worth looking at what I’ve learned. The most important: don’t pause until the first draft is done. I first conceived NHI in the summer of 2008. I spent a couple months creating the outline, then set it aside for a year. When I came back to it, my concept had changed enough that the outline was no longer useful. I spent another month rethinking the outline. It would have been better if I’d written a draft from that first outline as soon as I’d finished it. Getting some distance is great between drafts. Until that first draft is done, though, delays are a waste of time.

Not all lessons come from errors. I was pleased to learn that for the most part, the outline methodology I’ve developed works very well. Solid scene outlines allowed me to write very rapidly. This is the second project to benefit from a detailed outline: the romance novella I wrote last spring went very quickly, too. In the future, I expect I’ll become adept at planning scenes in my head and will be able to write from a bullet-point outline. In the meant time, I’ve found what works for me.

The final lesson: I should focus my energy on one thing at a time. Until this week, I would work on the novel in the morning, then at lunch I’d work on something else, like a short story. Sometimes I’d even dabble with a third project at night. This week, I focused on NHI and wrote almost 8,000 words in four days. If I had done that from the beginning of the draft, I’d have finished a month ago. The story would have been more cohesive, too. As it was, I found myself drifting from the main idea a little as the weeks wore on. In the future, I’m going to devote my writing energy to one project at a time.

So what’s next? I’m not sure. I have several short stories that I need to complete, a novella to revise, and research to do toward a new novel. I’ll pick one tomorrow