The First Million Words Don’t Count

The first million words don’t count.

That’s the catch-phrase young writers often hear in author circles when they start asking questions about turning manuscripts into movies and books.

I heard it again several weeks ago when I caught up with a friend, fellow indie author Dallas Gorham, and he mentioned it in the course of a chat about the importance of creating a quality back list and not wasting time worrying about what’s already written.

Dallas’s first million are behind him. He’s well on his way to the second million.

The context for the conversation comes from some self-examination about my writing process and progress. It comes from a question: Why did it take so long to get my first novel published?

Words Add Up Draft over Draft

I hadn’t thought about this in a while because I had no reason to. Whatever the reasons, they were in the past. They have nothing to do with the creative process for my under-construction novel, Dead Sleep.

Or do they?

From the time I first starting writing the book that ended up being Dead Odds to the day it first appeared on Kindle was more than 10 years.

Why? Because the first million words don’t count. True? Not true?

What brought this to a fine point wasn’t word count. It was the reality from other authors, nameless in my mind at this point, who shared their stories of success. Many of them include similar anecdotes about how they wrote one, two or more novels when they were in their twenties (and even teens) only to decide (or have someone else decide) that they were not worthy of publishing.

They did what writers do—stuck them in a drawer, never to be read again.

The idea of so much time, energy and creative effort going into producing a manuscript that will never see the printed page or e-reader seemed like a waste. I was determined to do whatever it took to make my manuscript worth publishing.

More than a decade and several thousand dollars invested in editors and author conferences later, I had a book.

I was delighted I did not have a novel tucked away inside a desk.

Or didn’t I?

First Draft a Monument to Overwriting

After the book finally published, I made a decision to clean my writing desk of all things Dead Odds—all printed-out and hand-written notes, all notebooks, everything. Among that everything was a handful of the dozen drafts of the book, including Draft 1, which was buried underneath a pile of other papers.

Draft 1 was a monument to overwritten, underdeveloped drivel. Subsequent drafts were tighter and brighter.

Multiple characters had to go. Their actions had to transfer to others who remained. Or not take place at all.

But the more that got cut (self-edited), the more plot holes and character gaps emerged. At times, writer’s block ensued. That was not an insignificant occurrence.

Weeks, sometimes months, went by without work on the manuscript.

It didn’t dawn on me then, but it has since: That was my novel in the drawer.

And do was Draft 2 and Draft 3. (I think Draft 4 is when the book finally rounded into the story that ended up being Dead Odds.)

About the First Million Words

About those first million words not counting. Others have traced the million-words lineage and derivation of this through the years, including a researched-based investigation on who said it first. (It appears to have stemmed from a letter that sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury penned to a sixteen-year-old aspiring writer in which Bradbury wrote: “Write a thousand words a day and in three years you will be a writer.”

Do the math and you find the young man would have written in excess of more than a million words.

This was translated loosely to mean that it takes one million words to gain writing competency.

The philosophy and sentiment was later adopted by Elmore Leonard, who has strong opinions about writing that include his oft-quoted “10 Rules for Writing.” In 2006, Leonard published a his history and thoughts about becoming a writer. (It is said he published this on his website first, but I am not sure I believe that because the three paragraphs seem more like an excerpt to me.)

In it, he attributes the million words philosophy to legendary crime-fiction author John D. McDonald. It read, in part:

“John D. McDonald said that you had to write a million words before you really knew what you were doing. A million words is ten years. By that time you should have a definite idea of what you want your writing to sound like. That’s the main thing. I don’t think many writers today begin with that goal: to write a certain way that has a definite sound to it."

Million Words Has Multiple Forms

Few of us are Bret Easton Ellis. (Look him up, kids.)

Most of us have to write and write and write, making mistakes along the way and then taking the time to make corrections. Again. And again. And again.

Tradecraft exists in every profession, from automotive repair to website development to governmental intelligence gathering to novel writing. Some of it you can learn from reading, research and from teachers.

The best of it—the parts that you realize you need to improve and the ones that you realize you’re expert at—you have to learn by doing.

The learning and the doing make up the million words and the manuscripts that never reached the book-reading public. And the drafts of a single book that never seem to have a last draft, until they do.