The First Draft is the Final Draft...
Pulp writer Frank Gruber was a machine…
…Of course, this is almost never true. But in my case, after having been doing this professionally for 27 years (my first big deal was inked way back in 1999 and I partied like it, too), I’ve gotten to the point where my first drafts are 90 percent of what the novel or story will ever be.
That’s not a brag, it’s not a lie, it’s simply “Just the facts ma’am.” But there was a time not that long ago when I’d have to write multiple drafts and I would attempt to polish each and every sentence and consider every word and, in the end, I usually cooked the piss out of the manuscript. Leave a steak on the grille for too long and it becomes inedible.
Many academics make this mistake. They get a fat paycheck from teaching and since they wax profoundly all day about nothing, and have student stories to correct, they often don’t have time or energy to write. This is why they write very little fiction and the fiction they do manage is overly edited and relegated to small academic presses that sell a few hundred copies mostly to students who are forced to buy their books. But they might win a Pulitzer, of course. I had a belly full of these retards in writing school.
Back to the professional writing world where every word means a few more cents that go towards the rent, or that villa in Tuscany where you can write in peace for a few months. If you’re going to make a living from this gig, you need to train yourself to be prolific. This takes discipline. You also need to train your brain to write well the first time around. It doesn’t have to be perfect. But you can edit as you go.
When the book is done, say after one month to six weeks of work, you simply go over it again, fix the spelling errors, fill in the holes, and button her up. That’s precisely how the pulp writers of yesteryear did it, and many of them made a solid living. A few got rich.
Still think this is bullshit?
Moonlight Weeps took me maybe two months tops to write in 2015. In all candor I did, however, hand it over to a professional editor. But the book was 90 percent of all it would ever be after that first draft. That year it won the ITW Thriller Award and the PWA Shamus Award. Go Get Me a Gun, my novelette that appeared in The Black Car Business from Down & Out Books, took a single afternoon. It was a finalist for a Derringer. Terminal Moonlight took about 4 weeks and was finalist for this year’s Thriller Award.
On the other hand, books that took me years to write, like The Innocent and Scream Catcher. Both sold well but no were ignored by the awards committees. I guess there’s a lesson to be learned here. I’m happy that I could bring it to you.