I’m writing from the class that started this whole craft-focused series.

	Eli Cranor

Shhh. Quiet. My students are writing too.

That’s the point of “ENGL 5093.” The class isn’t called "Editing the Novel," or "Revising the Novel," or even "Completing the Novel." This course's official title is “Drafting the Novel,” and I chose that title carefully.

I was also judicious about the requirements. By the end of the semester, each student must submit a minimum of 30,000 words. If that sounds like a lot, it’s not. Not really. Just a little over 200 words a day would’ve done the trick, but with midterms quickly approaching, most of my students have yet to start.

Or if they’ve started, they’ve stopped, gone back, and rewritten their first chapter over and over again. I call this approach to writing the “Line Drill.”

If you’re a former athlete, that term is probably familiar. We used to run them in basketball. You’d start on the baseline, sprint to the free throw line and back. Then the three-point line and back. Then half court and back. Until you reached the other end of the court (and collapsed from utter exhaustion).

I know people who write novels like this, constantly taking two steps forward and one step back. There’s nothing wrong with that process. Nothing at all. But for the sake of my class’s word-count requirement, those who choose the “Line Drill” approach are at a significant disadvantage.

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They will undoubtedly spend more time perfecting their 30,000 words than the students who choose to sprint straight to the other end of the court.

This dilemma has caused me to rethink my syllabus. Teaching writing is hard; teaching a class full of college students how to draft something as fragile and tedious as a novel-length manuscript, or even just the first act of one, is even harder.

Up until today, I was starting to feel as if I had bitten off more than I could chew. It was a feeling I recognized, an emotion that inevitably arises over the course of the drafting process. No matter how well you’ve plotted your course, no matter how much you've developed your characters, your story will falter. You’ll lose the “blue juice,” as Johnny Wink likes to say.

Such struggle makes sense when you really think about it.

It’s no different than building a house, or even just a shed. At first, you’re moving fast, laying a foundation, framing up walls, but then, when it comes time to tie everything together, the project stalls.

You go back and figure out where you messed up, or, if you’re like me, you keep plowing ahead. You bend the boards and hammer the nails in sideways until you have a structure that somewhat resembles your original concept. Having a completed product, warts and all, allows you to see the mistakes. You can't fix your problems until you've properly diagnosed them. It's almost as if you’re wearing two hats: your drafting hat and your editing hat.

Today, my students have their drafting hats on. I’ve given them thirty full minutes to write. Not think. Remember that Bradbury quote from last week? Just write!

I’m not sure how it’s going. I can hear their fingers tapping at the keys, their pens (yes, some of them chose to write longhand) scraping at the paper. But there is no way for me to truly prescribe the next best step.

In the end, it’s up to them.

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