A ZERO DRAFT IS IMMINENT

I’ve never done a Zero Draft before. To be honest, I thought the entire concept of a zero draft to be kind of silly. Isn’t a zero draft just a first draft? It’s the first draft you wrote so it’s the first draft.

But no. I’m finally coming to understand, that it’s a zero draft because it is nowhere near full enough to be considered a first draft. It is, however, enough to tell yourself the story. To provide you with a birds eye view of what will eventually be the novel. It’s less than a first draft, but more than an outline.

There’s occasionally dialogue in it because I love writing dialogue and it tends to come to be. But there’s also so much information I’m chucking at myself in this thing.

And here’s the thing, I’m mostly pantsing it. I’d written an outline I wasn’t terribly happy with but it was a start. And it gave me a good idea of where I wanted to pick up with my characters. However, once I started writing what I thought would be chapters of a first draft, the characters did that thing authors say they do. They kind of took over. And I ended up following them down a similar path to the one I’d planned, but down a scenic route I had not considered before. I’m still headed to the same destination, but I’m smelling some roses along the way.

What that means is that I’m currently discovering THE FACE OF GAIA in much the same way as you lot will be next year. And if my experience is anything to go by, you’re in for a treat.

I’m getting the words in and all that good stuff, but I’m still running my author platform too. So be sure to join me on Sunday for The Writer’s Den. More details on that down below.

On a personal note, I’ve lost a total of 35 pounds in the last three months and am now just twenty pounds away from my target weight. And that’s not taking into account how much muscle I’ve put on in that same amount of time. I’m not trying to brag or anything, I just think that’s pretty cool. I gained a lot of weight during the pandemic a couple years back and this is the first time since then any of it has fallen off, let alone thirty-five freakin’ pounds.