Q & A with author Mark PJ Nadon
Writing The Genesis Project
Q: “What was the most challenging part of writing The Genesis Project?”
A: Every draft after the first one.
The book went through so many changes, it’s practically a different book. But those changes didn’t come between drafts one and two. A little changed each draft and sometimes a lot. Although I have eight recorded drafts, many of those drafts included multiple edits, so I have no idea how many times I read through the story and changed or added parts to it.
The original story finished closer to 91,000 words, so a lot was cut out, but in my opinion most of it was bad writing and the story finished much stronger.
Because I wrote that story as a panster (flying by the seat of my pants—no outline of the plot or characters), I didn’t know enough about what I was writing to do it better the first time. These days, I believe my first drafts are much stronger, but it has taken a lot of learning.
As I progressed through each draft of The Genesis Project and made more changes, it became difficult to remember the personalities I’d changed and what I’d said in previous drafts about a character. Essentially I had to start outlining the characters and novel after I’d finished writing it.
The good news is that it has taken far less work to write the short stories and novellas in the same world. All the information I need is on Scrivener (where I now organize my outlines).