Complete First Draft = Celebratory Jello Shots and Dancing on the Table

So I’m just now realising that I didn’t tell you I finished the book. I finished the book!*

What now, you ask? Basking in the glory of the finished work? Anxiety spiral about whether it’s good enough? Celebratory jello shots and dancing on the table?

The last one, definitely. Beyond that I decided to take this week off to give it a little space before I went back to it. This has proven only forty-eight percent effective.** I am a workaholic and my fingers are itching because I have things to do. I found myself lying on the bed on the weekend editing the last chapter in my head because my brain has the focus of a crazed weasel when it comes to my work.***

At the moment I am keeping myself from working by plotting what I will do when Monday comes. First up I need to go over the last twenty-five thousand words I wrote, to make sure they’re not all refrigerator, rhubarb, toaster.****

Once that’s done I’m going to do a rewrite based on the final shape of the thing, and the notes and running commentary I’ve been adding in the earlier chapters as I’ve learned more about my characters and world and received early feedback from my beta readers.

Technically I guess it’ll be the second draft but I’m not really sure I should be calling it that because (except for this thing I need to do in the second chapter) they’re fairly top level cosmetic changes. Like final draft finessing. So it’s possible I’ll be done by the end of June. (Cue suppressed sounds of glee.) Of course that date may be a wild fantasy but I like having a deadline sort of thing to focus on. So June: I’m looking at you.

And then we do this dance again: finished, feedback from readers, editing… Except maybe next time they will simply do the dance of fulfilment and it will be done done (okay, in the pre-publisher/agent kind of way) and I can send it out into the world to find a home… *Sitting quietly revelling in fantasy. Don’t interrupt.*

 

* For certain values of finished, of course.

** This number was gathered using incredibly scientific techniques. *serious nods*

*** Don’t think about that comparison too hard, it will only be painful.

**** I don’t think it is. I had concerns about the last part of the story, about how the tension build would work out, about whether the earlier climax would overshadow the later one, but I think it worked out really well. I think it’s better than I’d pictured. Of course I might be delusional…