first drafting: 500 is not enough

 This year, I have made it a goal to write 500 words on my first draft a day. When I finish one first draft, I will start a new one. This will enable me to write many first drafts and not feel guilty for neglecting the next fucking Tinon book that I have to write. (I kid, I kid, Tinon#3 is actually going surprisingly well, especially given the amount of dread I felt when it popped up in the random number generator. Maybe it's like when it's winter and you're bracing yourself for -30 but then it's like, 4, and you're like, oh! Oh, this isn't so bad!) 

so I'm about 4k into my next first draft. It is an Aughts Boys book. It's the Benji book. Benji Holmes, from Right or Wrong, the dork who Matt used as a, SPOILER, stand-in for Luke, who was the real person he wanted to beat up. SPOILER OVER It's talking about his first year in Monticello, as an eighth grader (after some quick skimming of ROW to see if I'd specified that Benji was in Monticello earlier than 8th grade year, and the closest I got was "like seventh grade", which can easily be retconned to 8th), and I have no clue where I'm going. I've been, in the four thousand or so words I have, exploring characters that we met but didn't see much of in Right or Wrong--primarily Brian's friends. Marcus "Kill List" Keplinger--got to give him a last name. God damn it, I already gave him a last name. Marcus "Kill List" Waigh. Keplinger is better but Waigh has been published. Brian Henderson himself. What's Wilson's situation--why is he hanging out with Jason, Luke, and Matt at the beginning of ROW? It's been fun going back to try and figure out how these relationships formed. Jason is an asshole. It's great. 

But 500 words a day is not enough for me, personally. I need to get wrapped up in a first draft, and it is very hard for me to do that when I'm going on 500 words a day. I need to write a first draft in big old messes of 3000 words one day, 200 the next. Not this 500 a day bullshit. This limited amount of writing works wonderfully for second drafts, revising, retyping. That's fine. That's great. First drafts? Nuh-uh. I might have to do more thinking about how I approach it.