Grey, Baggy and Holey -- sharing a first draft Sheena Wilkinson

I like to start a new writing project at the beginning and keep on until I get to the end. I work on the principle of ‘first get it written, then get it right’. My first drafts tend to be overlong and messy, but more or less a recognisable version of the final version.

And one thing is for sure: I don’t show those first drafts to anyone. I would be mortified.

However, my current work in progress has been giving me a hard time. It’s a dual timeline, a device I like as a reader so long as it’s well done – by which I mean the stories should link, be of equal import and interest and the pacing should ensure that the reader is sorry to pause one timeline but then be immediately captured by the other one, either because you left it at such a cliffhanger, or because something in the first timeline has revealed something that makes you want to plunge back into the other one. When it’s well done, with reveals at just the right point in the narrative, it’s such a satisfying reading experience.

Turns out, though, that it’s not that easy to achieve. I’m over 70,000 words into the first draft of a dual timeline novel, set between the 1940s and 2020s, with my main characters linked by a house, and some drawings. I knew I had a good mystery, and even a twist, but I also knew that my modern timeline wasn’t pulling its weight. I was whingeing voicing my frustrations about this to a wise writer friend last week, when she generously offered to read it. 

I can’t let you see an unfinished first draft! I demurred. I would be too embarrassed. It would be like going out in public in my knickers. Grey baggy ones. With holes. 

But the wise writer friend (we’ll call her Emma, since she is in fact the insightful and generous Emma Pass) said that didn’t matter, and, since I really was in despair about how to fix it, and I didn’t think my usual strategy of just writing to the end and then editing it was going to work, I sent her the draft.

She read it quickly and said the encouraging things I needed to hear – especially that she hadn’t guessed the twist! – but agreed that the contemporary timeline needed another element. She had some suggestions, some of which chimed with my vision of the book, some of which didn’t, but – and this is why this was so helpful – in considering them, I chanced on what would work. 

The ending of this story could be that I returned to the MS today with fresh ideas, happy to be going in the right direction and not wasting any more time, but it’s more complex than that. When I looked at the progress I’d made with his book since starting it 14 months ago I could see that, more than anything else I’ve ever written, it has been interrupted many times along the way – by another book which was commissioned by a publisher and so had to take priority, and by editing two other projects for publication later this year. I've shared the relevant pages to show you just how many times the project has had to give way to something else. 

My writing is often stop-start, because of having to make money, but when I sat back and looked at this project, I realised that I had rarely had the chance for a really good run at it. I also realised that some of the 'new' ideas I'd had this weekend after talking to Emma were already there in my notes: I had just forgotten about them. No wonder it wasn’t exactly coherent. I’m sharing this to remind people of the importance of seeking help from other, trusted writers; of not being too precious about works in progress; of understanding that what we 'always' do might not always work, and of realising that we might already have had the answers all along.

And now I’m getting straight back to that manuscript. Grey, baggy and holey it might be right now, but thanks to being brave enough to expose it, and thanks to the wisdom of Emma, I know how to fix it.