I didn't know where else to put this but I just wanted to say, as of a few minutes ago, I have a complete first draft of just over 80k words!!! After a year and a half and ditching more than 80k words in the past, thinking I'm never gonna finish, wondering if I'll ever finish - it's finished!!!! And now onto the rewrite... T_T I'm gonna go to a special cake shop to celebrate
Congrats... just getting that first draft done is a major accomplishment. If I were you, I'd wait a while before the re-writing. You want to be as far removed from the manuscript as you can be so as to be a little more objective about the whole thing... good luck with it!
Congratulations! That is fantastic. A year and a half is not that bad to write a first draft of that size. Celebrate for a bit. The rewriting can wait a few days. Keep feeling fantastic and be proud of what you have accomplished.
Congratulations! I would also suggest waiting a while before starting the rewrite. Maybe even write some short stories or something, just get the old story out of mind. I don't know about you, but I can never see how crap some of my sentences are before it's been like a month since I wrote them
Hooray! My first thought was to sing Happy Birthday (hm, strange thought). Congratulations on accomplishing what millions of others only dream of doing.
Massive congratulations, you have already achieved what many could only wish to achieve...you should really celebrate as you deserve it!
Congrats! That IS awesome! You've done what few actually do. Finishing a novel is essentially one of (if not THE) the biggest steps!
Thank you so much everyone! I'm on the rewrite now - it's like every scene has been rewritten and I've deleted whole chapters and added 3 new chapters All in all the details are being lined up slowly and made into a coherent MS - I'm on p.177 out of 322 pages - so just under halfway through rewriting whoop whoop!!! It really is much faster than writing a first draft!
Well, don't think you'll be done editing anytime soon. Especially if you get a proofreader or editor or something along those lines, you might find a lot of areas where you could've done better. (Well, that was my experience anyway.) But don't ever let any kind of rewrites get you down. You finished that initial draft and, IMO, that's the most important part!
Yeh I'm paying an editor to look it over - gonna send it to him as soon as this rewrite is done Well, once it's done, I'm gonna leave it 2 weeks or so and then read it through from start to finish, and THEN send it to him. No point having him point out things I would've got anyway! Haha yes I am dreading the many corrections I'm sure he'll point out, but I'm having fun Fingers crossed I might have this done by the end of the year... doubt it, but that's the plan
Good Luck! Don't rush it too much. Odds are, you'll be tweaking it a lot until it's actually in print.
I agree entirely! It is always a good idea to have a breater, work on something a little different before returning to it with a fresh mind. IMHO
100% agree with this. I just got back from an almost two week trip to Kauai. The first thing I did when I got back was read my work and I found all sorts of little things to add, move or completely remove. And I am fairly certain I would not have caught any of those things if I hadn't took a break from writing while on vacation. Having a pair of eyes that don't gloss over things because they have read it a million times is very handy. Oh and congrats! =D
