Wow.
I finished my first draft of a novel just in time for the holidays due to a self-imposed deadline to get that sucker done. I’ve known since I typed ‘the end’ that the ending was going to need a lot of work but I was positive that the first two thirds of the manuscript were in good shape. You guessed it; I was wrong.
I purposely didn’t touch it for a couple months to get some distance and I’m almost out of red ink in pen one after twenty five pages. Not what I was expecting at all but I’m also starting to enjoy how much better the whole work will be when I’ve had the chance to completely go over it a few times. Still, in my pride zone I’ve always considered myself a first draft and go kind of guy (worked in college) but that simply isn’t the case anymore. I think it has to do with the different times I find myself sitting down to write and the length of the project. I can almost tell what I was thinking in various parts of my revision process and hopefully the finished third draft (yeah, still on the second) will be even more smooth all the way through.
On the flip side a story I’ve been working on for awhile has hit the 60,000 word mark and I cannot wait to start re-writing. Characters I thought I knew at the beginning have changed drastically and it bugs me knowing that the previous text is still there waiting to be dissected; go figure.
Reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova only a few hundred pages in so far but I’m enjoying myself. It's fun to read about the locales that the author's characters find themselves in.
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