First Draft Finished!

Last night I completed the first draft of my book. It was very exciting to finish it. Of course, my family was all asleep, so I had to celebrate with my cat (who did not approve of my picking him up and jumping around happily with him).

My book is thirty-three chapters long. It is 85,584 words long. I have spent over eight months writing this draft, and I am extremely proud of it.

That being said, I am aware that it is nowhere near done.

It's been an interesting process, writing a novel. I've had bits and pieces planned out since the beginning, including most of the last two chapters. I have made lists of what should happen when in the story, and then made different and newer versions as the book has progressed.

I have never been a person to write multiple drafts of something. Throughout high school and college, when I had a paper to write, I found it impossible to write more than one draft. I could never understand the need. As I was writing it, if something needed to be added earlier in the paper, I would simply stop and add it in. (Like this paragraph here, which I only thought of while starting the next one). I have never had a problem with writing informally. I'm fairly certain that is due to having British parents, so my way of speaking leans toward posh at time.

I started writing this book the same way as I wrote all those papers. I would write a scene and then pause (since it's remarkably difficult to move on immediately to a different scene after you've invested your mind and emotions in the first one). Next time I would write, I would reread the previous parts and edit them as needed. I did this for the first three chapters before I realized how impossible that was going to be.

When I first started writing my book, I made a list of the chapters in order to keep track of how long my chapters were and make sure they were all fairly similar in length. After that third chapter, I started making notes next to the page length of edits that occurred to me as I wrote further along.

Some of these edits are minor things. Make sure this person hands this item to so and so. Stuff that will take just a few minutes to complete. Others are more intensive. In this first draft, I had the eight year old character worrying about her father's health and thinking that perhaps he might be about to die. Now that I've completed the book, I am going to take that part out. It's not remotely important to the story, and adds worry that simply does not need to be there. That edit may take more time.

I also have plot changes that has happened as the story has progressed. Situation A that was to lead to situation B is now more smoothly reached by situation C. So that first situation needs to be written out.

I also need to add some more of the personal interaction between the adult characters than I have in my first draft. I have a couple of notes as to where to add them, and I'll see if it fits to bump that up in other spots as well.

So my current plan is to go through my book and make the changes I have thought to make while writing as well as others that spring up as I'm rereading it. Then I shall ignore it for a week or so. I may start writing a stand alone novel I've been thinking about while writing this book (which is meant to be the first in a trilogy) or perhaps I'll just read a lot of other people's books. Anyway, then I shall reread it and see what I think needs to be changed then and make those changes. At that point, I will hand off copies to my three fabulous readers who are going to give me some brilliant constructive criticism, see what they think, adjust the book as needed, and then try to find an agent who would want to represent me. Which will be very scary, but it's all part of the process. Luckily, I have enough to do before then that I'm not worrying about that at the moment.

I have no idea how long the revisions will last. But I hope it will be as rewarding as writing the first draft has been!