Welcome to the first entry in a new, ongoing series from my logbook. One of my core habits is to write two pages of my novel every morning—a raw, stream-of-consciousness process to get the story out. In this series, I'll be sharing those unfiltered first drafts with you. I've layered my own real-time editing notes onto the text to give you a look inside the engine room, showing the process of shaping a first thought into a final story. Let's explore this recent draft together.
Bold Italic: Text I want to query
Bold Type: Notes for future me.
I am old, so incredibly old.
Today it was Cash’yas turn with our weekly one to one mentoring sessions. Walking with her to our usual space in the bloom observation lounge, our comparative age was striking. I always liked to keep the walks to and from the lounge fairly casual.
Is walking and talking the most I can get out of the scene? Can they be doing something else that tells more story, perhaps about the character, or the environment, or the day to day inner workings of their lives?
However today I was starting to regret it. Her heart string was torrid, vibrating with a striking array of emotional back and forth. She was more doubtful than I had seen her in many years, perhaps since she had joined the academy.
A rising star in the rabbit world, gifted with both a remarkable ability to hold the history of our kind in her memory, but also with an uncanny human-like ability to employ logic, science, and other such traits towards that history. Her studies of Rabbit etymology alone had helped piece together stories of our history, often implied or inferred, but unspoken, and bring them back to life again.
Unfortunately, that nearly human-like problem solving ability also seemed to have manifested in a human-like ego that was subject to all the fraught emotions that come with it. Including the need to defend said ego. Rarely had I ever come across a rabbit so affected by how she felt she was being perceived. As she talked, I devoted one ear to her concerns, and another to a question that had arisen in my ears eye.
Am I being overly harsh? Was I too, as a younger rabbit, afflicted with the same doubts, the same emotions?
I recalled my time as a young rabbit, even before school took me into its embrace, I sensed a difference. Where my peers might spend a large amount of time running around, climbing things, playing street games. The dares they used to set up for each other in regards to using their gravitational pulls in a way that barely toed the line of secrecy when humans were near.
This is the first mention of rabbits using their gravitational skills for play. In a first draft, it's fine to just state it like this, but in the edit, I need to make this tangible. What does a "daring" use of this ability look like? Does it involve leaping impossible distances? Pranking humans? I need to brainstorm a specific micro-scene to show this in action rather than just telling the reader about it.
I was instead absorbed in my own world, feeling the chorus of the strings around me. I may not have appeared very involved with other rabbits my age, but I was following along in a way they never understood.
Did this bother me? Perception is a funny thing. I perceived myself as connected. They perceived me as aloof. I suppose I didn't really understand why at that age. I didn't know that I was all that different. I didn't really mind either, but then, I had the strings. I was absorbed in a way of seeing the world that was relatively unique to me. I just didn't know it yet.
My mind jumped forward to when I was selected out of my school and taken under the tutelage of my old master, Sinto eel’lop. On one hand I was suddenly having a lot of attention paid towards me. I was being celebrated, and my skill was being made clear to me through both my tutelage, and the way I was being received by other Rabbits. I was understanding my uniqueness more. I was not feeling doubt per sé. Doubt would have implied a sense of contrast between what I was and what I thought I should be.
Jun’ip insists twice that he didn't feel "doubt." This is a key part of his character voice—this serene, almost detached acceptance. Is he a completely reliable narrator of his own youth, or is this a story he tells himself now that he is old? This is a question I need to hold onto. His inability to relate to Cash'ya's very human doubt stems from this core difference. I must make sure his actions throughout the story align with this unique worldview.
I didn't have such a notion of a self I wanted to compare myself too. The strings had shown me from a young age that the person I am, is intricately connected to everything else. How can you be something you are not, when the thing that you are is intrinsic to everything else? No, I didn't doubt. I just accepted. At least, I accepted what the world was making me into.
But I did feel other pain. I was taken away from my family and the few friends I had. I held onto that resentment for a while. Part of me knew that it was folly to resent the way things were changing around me. I had very little power to change it back, and even if I could have, the world around me would have taken them away again later. Still, I can't deny, I felt loss and sadness for it. And I did hold onto those emotions for a while. But I always found comfort in the strings... The strings are home. I suddenly came back to the long corridor, to cash'ya still revealing her fraught doubts and emotions.
The entire reflection happens during a single walk down a corridor. This "walk and talk" structure is good for a stream-of-consciousness draft. The question for the edit is one of pacing. Does this long internal flashback feel static? I could experiment with breaking it up more, interjecting short snippets of Cash'ya's present-day dialogue to heighten the contrast between her anxious energy and his calm memories
Digging into her emotions like a true scholar. Finding ideas, comparing & contrasting them. When the song of the strings is your companion. You sometimes lose perspective and forget that for most rabbits, they are still a challenge to grasp, and an exercise to practice. Cash'ya for all her skill as a Rabbit lore holder, was not that gifted in connecting to and feeling the song of the strings as I was.
This line establishes the central conflict of the mentor-protégé relationship. Cash'ya is brilliant in a logical, human-like way, but lacks the intuitive, mystical connection the narrator, Jun’ip has. This isn't just a difference in skill; it's a difference in how they experience reality. This theme—logic vs. intuition, knowledge vs. wisdom—is going to be a major engine for the story. Every interaction between them should, in some way, explore this tension.
That comment from my old master came back to me. "The strings are home".
The strings are home" is a powerful, recurring line. But what does that feel like? To make this central concept land, I need to build a 'sensory library' for it. Is it a literal sound, like a deep cello note? A physical vibration in the bones? A visual shimmering in the air? In future scenes, I need to layer in these specific sensory details so the reader can feel the comfort of the strings, not just be told about it.
I felt them vibrate through me in my old masters voice and my calm immediately returned. I knew what was needed.
And that's where the two pages ended for that day. A raw collection of memories and feelings, setting the stage for the real conversation between mentor and student. This process of discovery is what I love most about a first draft—it's messy, surprising, and full of potential.
There have been so many times when I have been following this two pages a day process that has surprised me. There is something rather magical about stream of consciousness writing. It allows the subconscious to solve problems in your story you didn't even know were there. And to colour in scenes that had previously just been structured foundations.
I'd love to hear your thoughts. What's your favorite part about a raw first draft—the potential, the freedom, the happy accidents?
I usually despise fantasy 'wips' and the way people thrust it upon others as if they care. But yours is simply well done. The subsequent fragment has the breadth and depth of an Alice Munro short story; yet it also has the pacing, music and grace of an absolutely breath-taking poem. Its shifts between registers – and makes me want to start a creative correspondence with you. Talk about our writing and other things regarding art in general. I am going to subscribe in hopes you do the same. And want to follow this serialization. I hope you're planning to serialize this book! Imagine our bonded will power with these exercises will bear much fruit. I'll be in touch