The Draft That Changed Its Author
It was quite a surreal feeling to hit ‘save’ for the final time on my first draft. I did so in the quiet of my kitchen with no one else at home. My coffee was sat alongside me and my dog was sleeping on the sofa.
I closed my laptop, finished my coffee and set about doing some household chores before my wife got home.
There was no big celebration. No handshakes or cheers to acknowledge such a monumental effort.
I had a sense of achievement and pride in my work but the reality was that the finish line that had hung over me for so long was never truly the finish. It was a marker, for sure, but it simply closed the chapter on a section of this journey and opened the door to a whole new world on the other side.
It’s a strange notion to be beholden to such an arbitrary concept as completing a manuscript.
The contextual value placed on such an achievement has, upon finally reaching the milestone, reared its’ head in the form of an eye-opening realisation.
The concept for this book first began to take form at the end of summer in 2024. I sit here now in the middle of 2026 piecing together the thoughts and feelings I have towards a project that has taken an immeasurable degree of time, effort and emotion to complete. The timeline for this aforementioned project has however traversed far more than simply time spent in front of a screen.
In the recent Pro League block in London I scored a goal that the commentator followed with;
“It’s been a topsy-turvy few years, I think it’s fair to say, for Nick Bandurak.”
With his surface-level knowledge of some of the things I’ve encountered in the past 24 months, topsy-turvy could be a means of describing it. The reality, at least from my perspective, has seen me go through far, far more than anyone actually realises.
That’s not a cry for sympathy. It’s simply applying context to why this manuscript had, in many ways, become an anchor throughout some pretty seismic changes in the past couple of years. It was a constant source of escapism; ever-changing and evolving but always there.
Taking what I now affectionately look back on as ‘the long way round’ to its completion, has afforded my manuscript to grow in a way that I could never have achieved had I not had the personal experiences that I have in that time frame.
I had expected a finality to accompany the finishing of my draft. The reality is that I finished with more questions than had coursed through my mind whilst writing. I was curious to re-read the entire manuscript as a finished draft. I was curious as to what I would make of the editing process. I was curious as to how I’d done. I wanted some form of judgement to tell me whether I’d done okay.
In all honesty this was simply the athlete in me. I’ve been trained to have a form of measurement attached to the majority of things that I do. It can be an objective evaluation of my performance in terms of output or timings or a subjective evaluation or opinion from a coach. Upon finishing my manuscript however, it was just myself and my thoughts. If you’re not careful, that can be a scary place to be.
In truth though, I like it there.
I’ve spoken about my journey as an international athlete and my opinion on what it takes to get there. It’s a mind-numbingly defiant belief in what you’re doing. If what you’re doing is well-informed and brings value (in whatever context you apply that) then you’re going to be on the right path.
For me, I feel like I have this in my writing. My value comes in the form of my enjoyment in the process of becoming a part of one of the purest forms of creativity. I get enjoyment from the escapism and clarity that accompanies a writing session. This habit has allowed me to keep coming back to my work with a refreshed and energised approach and thoroughly enjoy creating every word of the 95,000 that comprise this particular story.
This identity has been forged through the manuscript in the same way that the same commentator went on to acknowledge what it was doing in my play;
“He’s showing the character of himself by coming back in and making himself indispensable going into a World Cup.”
The manuscript was never the achievement. It was the habits that were built within that context. I’ve proven it within my sporting career and it has allowed me to build towards my writing journey in the same manner.
A mind-numbingly defiant belief in what I was creating.
This manuscript has given me nothing tangible. There’s no success, no validation and no metric by which to measure its’ quality. My wife has been told the general premise and some ideas for scenes and moments throughout the story but aside from this, I have not yet shared my work with anyone.
This particularly daunting notion can wait a little while longer…
What this manuscript has given me however is humility, perspective and, above all patience. Seeing and reading the stories of authors and their achievements gives me a pretty clear perspective on how far I have to go to achieve a semblance of what they have.
I’m also aware of the fact that there’s a considerable chance that this story doesn’t see the light of day in the way that I long for it to right now. And, as crazy as it sounds, I’m okay with that.
Because there’s just a small chance that it might.
Mind-numbingly defiant belief, right?
I’m a more confident writer than I was at the outset of this journey. I have gained an immeasurable amount of happiness, enjoyment and calm throughout the development of this manuscript. I’ve been reading and watching with a different perspective, embracing a new mindset that has been forged with the creation of this world that has engulfed my mind for months and months.
I found out pretty quickly that finishing this manuscript wasn’t the end of some journey. It was simply the start of a much bigger step on a path that barely feels possible to reach the end of.
The truth is though, that very thing that feels so far away that you can barely recognise it is always closer than you think.
On my 29th birthday, I still would have done absolutely anything just to have one international cap. The path of an international athlete was a distant dream.
Yet here I am shortly about to head to my second World Cup with over 50 international goals under my belt and with European and Commonwealth Games medals sitting in my room.
I have this quite simply because I had (and all-together now) a mind-numbingly defiant belief in what I was doing.
So the draft is finished and the editing can start.
Let’s just see where it goes.
