Your First Paragraph is Your Whole Novel
(With 8 drafts of my WIP's first paragraph to prove it)
Hi, I’m Miranda. Today I celebrate my forty-ninth birthday, while my sixth novel is out on submission, and I’m trying something new here.
Recently, I was talking to the head of my kid’s high school, who was teaching a creative writing class focused on revision. The class (which he had designed) incentivized revision by automatically raising a student’s grade every time they submitted a new draft of a piece they’d written earlier in the semester. He’d conceived of this class— and this incentive—because, while most writers he knows (himself included, with both an MA and PhD in English), spend the majority of their “writing” time in the revision space, the concept of having to rewrite something is not glamorized in the cultural story we tell about writers, especially to kids. And even though the students had knowingly signed up for a class on revision, they were pushing back on its benefits. He wondered if I, a professional novelist, might come talk about whether revision is important to my working life.
I sure would, I said. I wouldn’t have the career I have without revision! Or some version of that, which was hopefully slightly more chill.
When I introduced myself to the class, I tried extra EXTRA hard to be chill, because secretly I’m sixteen and I remember how annoying it was when adults try to tell you how the world works in Serious Tones. But it also felt important to show these students just how central revision is to my daily existence as a writer, and, as a result, how much my life and the life of whatever book I’m working on are intertwined.
I’ve been working on this particular novel— the one out on submission—for more than four years; according to my work log, I started writing in earnest in October of 2021, and had a first draft by February of 2022. I revised that draft, finishing in February 2023, and then revised again, finishing in May of 2023, changing what I could both times based on the revision process I’ve developed over the course of twenty years, and on the generous feedback of a few trusted readers. Once I had the third draft, I secured new representation with two agents. In consultation with them, I’ve revised the book multiple times over two years, tackling the first 100-ish pages of the book three times (in the Fall of 2023, February of 2024, and May of 2024), and then the whole manuscript two more times (in the Fall of 2024, and in May of 2025). That’s… a lot of revising.
Now that the book has been submitted “wide,” and I’m almost half a century old, my practical take on my current state lies along the lines of:
I’m entering my fiftieth year alive and relatively happy (the state of the world notwithstanding), loving, working, thinking, gardening, and most of all, trying to grow in an iterative way— that is, to transform myself day by day in ways that choose joy and curiosity.
It would really be grand if one (or more!) of the editors who currently has my book on their desk wants to “acquire” it (aka buy it in order to publish it) and I believe someone will!
And my emotional counterpoint:
How am I actually almost fifty?!? This is ludicrous!
Some days (especially when I flip through the manuscript and am reassured that I think this is the best thing I’ve ever written— largely because of the time and care I’ve taken rewriting and rethinking) I’m calm and collected and full of belief. The rest of the time, my thoughts run the gamut from doubtful to panicked.
There’s something there in that second to last bit, isn’t there? Something that lies in the reassurance of revision, of how honing a piece of work (whether it’s one’s book, or one’s self) is, if nothing else, a way to be sure that what you’re putting into the world is the closest you can get to its best version—at least until someone smart gives you compelling feedback about how you can improve it (and you agree with them).
That’s how I feel about aging too.
Anyway, back to the class. I tried to think of how to impart upon these 10th-12th graders that revision isn’t just, like, an aspect of writing a book— it’s the majority of the process. I needed a practical way to demonstrate this truth, in a single class period; there was nothing I hated more at sixteen than being told something was true by an adult who had no evidence to back up their claim.
What was short enough, and obvious enough to do this work for me? A paragraph. Well, what paragraph? In my opinion, there are few words more important in a book than the handful that begin it. And what’s great about the first paragraph is you don’t have to “set it up” at all— no explanations of plot or character needed. Finally, as someone who usually writes a book from its beginning, my first paragraph seemed like a great place to show how revision can shape (and reshape) the trajectory of a longform project.
But most of all: I always try to smuggle the emotional story of a whole novel into its very first paragraph. That arc (in the book’s first paragraph, and the whole book) is usually a little fuzzy in my first drafts, because, you know, I haven’t written the whole book yet. But I’m really, really proud to say that after eight drafts of this new book, the arc of the book is fully embedded, developed, and even lyrically laid out in its first paragraph. And I haven’t sold it yet. (See? Some days I am optimistic!).
Back in the classroom, after I introduced myself, I shared the first paragraph of my work-in-progress, through its eight drafts. The kids took turns reading each draft out loud, and then, as a group, we’d talk through what was working, what wasn’t, what had changed, what hadn’t, and how “done” we felt it was.
And now I’m going to share the eight drafts of the first paragraph of my new novel— which have never been seen outside of my writing group, a few friendly readers, my reps, that highschool creative writing class, and the editors who have the book on their desks right now—with you.