So who says you should get a first draft down before you revise?

I'm here to question if it's really necessary, or best, to nail down that first draft. As one who's gone against the advice and has instead worked on revising the first half multiple times, I can see some benefits to do it this way.

I'm still riding a high from my recent writer's group critique of my prologue and a couple opening chapters from the point of view of Asher, the central character. It's the first time I've felt my writing in this novel has finally arrived. It was amazing to hear the fellow writers/readers talk about the characters, getting exactly what I wanted them to get, seeing the characters exactly the way I'd hoped they'd be seen. Also, I've been through enough drafts (7? 13?) of that prologue that I've finally arrived at a narrative voice that I'm starting to like. (Click here to read the prologue.) To be told I had a strong narrative style was amazing to hear. I fall in love with novels because of their voice--and knowing how important it is, I have long felt the real lack of that in my novel-in-progress. I guess I'm learning a first-time novelist's lesson: maybe that voice and style doesn't, or at least not always, pour out, whole and gripping in the first draft. It took me many to get there. It took me years to get comfortable in my characters' shoes enough to speak for them, to let the poetry begin to seep out as I tell their story. I've long been frustrated by how bare my prose has been in recent years. Because I've been working at freelancing for magazines I thought to perhaps blame that. Other moments, I tell myself I'm really just primarily trying to figure out plot and my characters--how can I expect my prose to sing like poetry? But as I read aloud my pieces last week to my writer's group, I saw that it was there, finally. The writing was good.

It's not done. But it's much closer to the kind of rich writing I used to do in poems and short narrative essays. Man, is a novel ever a different kind of beast to deal with!

And that is why I can see the merits of writing, rewriting, revising and editing the beginning before getting to the end. Because I have done so, I think my yet-unwritten second half has got to be better. I've revised my way into knowing my novel enough to have a glimpse of its ending.

I've been feeling really bad that my novel still hasn't seen the end of a single draft. I've been working on it 4 years, or 6 if you count the 2 years I created the 2 short stories which eventually became the impetus for the novel. I've got maybe 60,000 words and no end in sight. I've heard again and again that i just need to get that first draft nailed down--a sketch even, so I can then later go back and fill in the details and subplots, etc. I even bought the book on how to write novel in 30 days, outlining how you do this bare bones type of draft. (I never intended to use the 30 day perimeter, but I saw the merit in doing the method)

I've had little forward momentum on the plot because I've spent a lot of time going back over my first half. (Largely exacerbated by having joined an online critique group that needs to read from the beginning, making me want to spruce up every chapter before I sent it.) Part of the reason I couldn't nail down the second half is because I simply don't have a really good handle on it. I sort of know some events and outcomes, but the few times I've tried to write ahead, I got stalled, or simply trashed it, because i didn't have great insight into my characters' emotional landscapes.  I just now am realizing a lot of that is due to the fact that i didn't know my characters well enough, because I didn't write them deep enough in the beginning. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'd been avoiding one of my main characters and writing from his point of view. And I have to say, finally facing him, writing a few opening chapters form his perspective, has really grounded me in the time and place of my novel in a way I hand't yet been. With him in place, all my other characters' psyches are deepening. This work has transformed my beginning, and I'm sure, as I go about editing the middle, it'll transform that, maybe even change it significantly.

So here's to questioning well-tested advice for writers. But I do know I do eventually need to heed it--I still DO have nail down that first draft,  all the way through! I'm just now maybe not going to beat myself up over the fact that I didn't do it first.

Some examples of journalism that I blamed for my bare-bones prose:
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Chef Jamie Oliver Versus School Lunches: Where Do The Dietary Guidelines Come From Anyway?

How to Determine If Your Child is Ready to Begin Kindergarten