What My First Draft Looks Like

Woot, woot! I finally finished the first draft of my WIP.  Here is a photo of it.  I finished it on October 23rd in the parking lot of a Home Depot.  The child had fallen asleep in her car seat and my fiance ran into the store to get a few things so out came my notebook! If you've been following my blog for any length of time then you know that I write my first drafts longhand in notebooks I carry with me everywhere.  This is due mostly to time constraints.

I actually started writing this book last Fall but then I had to stop to tend to other matters and I didn't really get back to working on it until April of this year.  I made a big push to get at least one draft down.  Get it out, get it on the page.  Do my worst.  This draft is what Chuck Wendig at Terrible Minds would call a beachstorming draft.  (And if you haven't read his 250 Things You Should Know About Writing yet, you should get on over there and buy a copy.  It's only 99 cents and it's freaking awesome.)  Anyway, this draft was written completely out of order and when I say out of order, I mean that sometimes I'd break in mid-scene and start writing a scene that will eventually go earlier in the book.  I've started typing it up now and it's quite confusing!  But my goal was just to get it all out and deal with stuff like chronology later.  So it's out of order, barely legible and oh yes, filled with inspirational drawings by my daughter:

 

Now the REAL work begins.

This draft was like the wild, drunken party. Now I've slept off my hangover and I have to clean up my trashed house.

Anyway, here's the skinny (this is in no way any kind of pitch, I know it's rough!  But since I just went on and on about my WIP, I should at least tell you something about it.  I plan on having a polished pitch once I am finished with this next draft and have a better idea where all the puzzle pieces fit.)

So here is a short-unpolished-very-rough-just-something-to-give-you-an-idea-what-it-is-about paragraph:

A trio of men are preying on Philadelphia prostitutes, brutally assaulting and mutilating them. Police Detective Jocelyn Rush's investigation into the most recent attack unearths a series of similar assaults going back four years. She quickly tracks down two of the assailants but they refuse to give up the third suspect--the one with a penchant for mutilation. As the attacks continue, escalating in frequency and brutality, Jocelyn is desperate to find the third attacker. When a monster from her past resurfaces, offering a dubious lead in the case, she follows through on it only to find that evil lurks dangerously close to home.

I may post a chapter soon.  We'll see how it goes . . .