So, you wrote a novel. Now what?
on finally finishing my first draft
I wrote a fucking book.
That is to say that this past Tuesday, at approximately 4pm, I finished the first draft of my novel. I don’t know what I thought would happen when I did—what kind of cosmic miracle I expected to occur when I typed those last few words, but it didn’t happen. Nothing happened. I wrote that last line of dialogue and closed the document. It only registered a few minutes later, when I was wrist deep in what I call my bag of ‘sad lunch’ that I realized that was it. I was finished.
Not really, though, of course. Obviously. Clearly, this thing is not done yet. Arguably, now is when the real work begins. I’m both excited and nauseated by the prospect. I’m assuming this is normal.
When I was younger than I am now, more naive than I was this time last year and all the last years of my twenties, I thought being a writer would be glamorous. Maybe not glamorous in the Fergie sense, but in the Didion sense. I thought that being a literary It Girl was something that simply happened to you when you were in your twenties, in New York City and trying to write something someone could potentially give a shit about. I learned the hard way that there is no intrinsic It-Girl-ness in typing scenes into a google doc between tasks at work, wincing with each sip of cold breakfast tea, and then spending the train ride home copy-and-pasting it all into Scrivener.
I blame Sex and the City, and every single piece of romcom-esque media that worked to convince me that being a writer was all fun, and flirt, and free time, and brunches, and cafes, and looking cool and being rich (Andie Anderson, Erica Barry, et al., I’m looking at you).
I love all the discourse on the topic while knowing that I have nothing to contribute because I’m still hanging onto the delusion of all those romantic notions as a mode of survival. Working in publishing isn’t what Hilary Duff or Kate Hudson promised me and writing however-long-form isn’t filled with as many caffeine fueled yet cozy nights at my desk in front of a bay window wearing a turtleneck as I may have envisioned—but it could be? Right? Couldn’t it be?
Don’t answer that. Please. I still need to wake up every day and drag myself onto the LIRR and sit at my desk to drown in the query inboxes of my bosses and pretend that the three sentences I wrote that day are not only good, but also matter. I need my Sally Rooney/Carrie Bradshaw/Whoever Else delusion to get through that.
Actually, I’m actively fighting the disillusionment that’s come with working in the industry in an entry-level position and finishing a draft as someone who is, in fact, not an It Girl. I’m fighting hard to celebrate every accomplishment, every small step in a forward direction. I’m keeping my eyes firmly on the goal post, tracking it and working to make up any lost ground as it moves. It’s exhausting, and if I let it, it would all probably crush me (if not physically, then in spirit at the very least).
I need the idea of Didion and Bradshaw (tastemakers of generations with more in common than the pretentious literati might allow you to believe) like some people need the idea of god. It might be a twisted form of faith, but it keeps me going, believing, and hoping. (Hoping for what? I don’t know anymore. More than the current, I guess.)
Deep in the West Village, after a bottle of white wine, an espresso martini, and a little more white wine, I practiced an act of defiance. An act against my own self and all the mundanity and ordinariness that settled when I typed those last lines. Inherently, finishing my book meant nothing other than that I was finished, so I had to make it more. Whether I’m the only person who cares about it or not, my It Girl status only relegated to (maybe) my friends and my mom, this is something worth celebrating.
So… (here comes the bare bones of my pitch—the synopsis is currently loading…)
Complete at 93,000 words, THE GETAWAY is Writers & Lovers meets Emily in Paris in a story for hopeless romantics about unraveling grief and burgeoning freedom.
THE GETAWAY has the tenderness and wit of Lily King’s WRITER’S & LOVERS, digs into the lush interiority of a young woman similarly to LUSTER by Raven Leilani, and features the kind of sensual longing that’s laced through Sally Rooney’s NORMAL PEOPLE.
You are so the It Girl! Love you!