It's a little too drafty in here

My plans for abandoned manuscripts that may still have merit

Hi friends,

My office is getting drafty. I don’t mean that air is seeping in through cracks around my window, but that I have a growing pile of manuscript drafts, and I’m beginning to feel it. It’s a problem I’ve been ignoring for too long because of my tendency to follow the shiny new idea.

There are a lot of drafts in the pages of these notebooks!

Ideas are often easy at first. I’m hit with a burst of brilliant inspiration and I set to writing, only to get stuck somewhere between the “inciting incident” and the middle. Or I’ll write a complete, though messy, draft and set it aside while I work on something new, with every intention of returning to it in the near future. And then I don’t.

This doesn’t happen every time, of course. I wouldn’t have six published books if it did! But it happens a lot. I used to tell myself that it was because those ideas didn’t have merit for whatever reason, or I wasn’t good enough, or they needed to ruminate in my head for who knows how long while I worked on something else. And I’m sure one or more of those things is true in many cases. But as I was reorganizing my files recently I realized that a lot of my old (and not so old) abandoned drafts do have merit. At least enough merit to see them through to “the end.”

So, what’s the problem? Me. I’m the problem. Now, don’t worry. I’m not being down on myself. But the truth is that sometimes I’m afraid or unwilling to do the work to see a story through to its end. I don’t like it when the writing gets hard. I want a story to flow out of me like water through a brand new faucet. And when it doesn’t, I turn it off.

But a slow trickle will still fill the tub! Not only that, but there are ways to get writing, like water, flowing smoothly again. Things like taking short, intentional breaks. Brain dumping. Brainstorming. Outlining (ugh). Talking over plot issues with critique partners. Doing writing sprints. Reading about writing. Powering through until I have a full, workable draft, no matter how messy it is.

There are a few manuscript drafts that I’d like to revisit to see if I can get them flowing again. There’s a good mix to choose from. Stories like…

• a YA fantasy about an orphaned princess and a plot to take over her kingdom (partial draft)

• a middle grade fantasy involving a breach between worlds (full first draft)

• a nonfiction picture book about a specific feature of the United States Postal Service (full draft that needs a better ending or maybe a complete rewrite)

• a picture book about the six days of creation (full first draft)

• a picture book about a newcomer to a woodsy neighborhood (partial draft)

I think I will tackle the picture books first, starting with the ones for which I already have a complete first draft. But before that I’m going to finish what I’m currently working on. My current projects are the snowman book dummy, a poetic picture book about winter, and a middle grade historical novel in verse. The plan is to have a first draft of the winter picture book by the end of February, then go back and complete my second round of revisions for the novel as I continue to work on the book dummy. I hope to have the book dummy finished by the end of March. And, if all goes well, I’d like to have the historical verse novel in submission shape by the end of May.

There. Now that I’ve told you my plans, I have to stick with them!

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I’ve read a lot of wintry picture books lately, for research and for fun. Here are a few newly discovered ones that I enjoyed:

• Into the Snow by Yuki Kaneko, illustrated by Masamitsu Saito. I especially love the mixed media illustrations in this one.

• Snow by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Lauren Stringer. This lyrical book perfectly captures the wonder and magic of snow, and the illustrations make me long for a snow day.

• Snow by Uri Shulevitz. I like how this book looks at snow from a child’s perspective.

• Counting Winter by Nancy White Carlstrom, illustrated by Claudia McGehee. A gorgeous new winter counting book.

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Some snowman progress!