First Draft is Done

Well, it’s done. I wrote the words “The End” in Dream Chaser last night. Over the past several months as I’ve been working on this, I wondered how I would feel when I finally wrote those words. The answer surprised me. I thought I’d be on a high, excited and euphoric. I did finish, which is no small accomplishment for me. I’m really good at starting, not so good at finishing

But the thing is, I know it’s not really done, and I guess that’s why a deeper sense of accomplishment eludes me. All I am thinking about is what needs to be fixed, and how I’m going to fix it.

I’m also very nervous because in its current form, Dream Chaser is more novella than novel at roughly 47k words, but I’m not going to worry over that too much, at least not until I make the changes I know I need to make.

Despite doing some world building and outlining, I feel like I know the story so much better now than when I started it last year. I also feel like my writing ability has improved through taking How To Think Sideways, the two blizzard short stories, the Unicorn short story, and the critiques from my How To Structure Fiction scenes.

My goal is that once the revisions are done to this draft, it will be in a state that is ready for alpha readers. If its still short at that point, I’ll have to see if the alphas can point to some unexplored plot thread or something I glossed over that can both strengthen the story as well as bring the word count up to industry standards.

November now becomes NaNoReMo (National Novel Revision Month) in earnest. I’m setting a goal of having the revisions done by Christmas.