Fiction Mondays: First Drafts

It's kind of strange how stories come together at different speeds: even when you have two stories of the same word count, one may take months and another get knocked out in a matter of weeks. I have one in a notebook that I keep adding too, trying to see the shape of the story I'm telling; I mostly write it while I'm on breaks at work, and it's a slow process of discovery. The idea was initially built around two scenes, but the further into it I get, the more story there is between those scenes.

Last week, I wrote the entire first draft of a short story. I started it on Monday and finished it yesterday. The story is about twins whose mother ran off when they were kids and now calls only on holidays. I jumped into it with a few images and a small line of description, and the story came together incredibly quickly. For a first draft, I'm really proud of it. It was one of the fastest drafts of a story I've ever written, and when I re-read it, I was surprised to find that I really liked the shape of the story. Of course, it needs a lot of work, but I feel like I got the framing done now I can go in and start to work on the smaller details.

The other story feels more like I'm drawing the blueprint as I go, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's a first draft, right? So what if it ends up with no doors and four chimneys?