The End
Okay, I really happen to hate those words in the context of
someone else’s book, but in my own, I love writing those words. So, as you
might have guessed, I got to type those words at the end of a really long first
draft process this weekend.
I love to run stats because I’m a total nerd. I was pretty
much born a nerd. When I was seven my brother said, “Whatever you do, don’t
talk like that when you get to Pomolita [the middle school we went to],
everyone will think you’re a nerd.” And I am. So here they are, the stats:
Title: THE PRINCESS SINGULARITY
Genre: YA Fantasy (it’s a portal fantasy, so that’ll limit
my potential agent audience)
Words: 112,000 (but I’m probably going to replace about
100,000 of them, so still a ton of work to do).
Start Date: June 16th, 2012
End Date: January 19th, 2013
Words per day: 525 (I didn’t write on it for 120 of those
days, so it’s really 1200 words per day)
Times I considered giving up on this novel: 0
Times I worried that it wouldn’t matter because this book
could never be The One no matter how much I revise it: 112,000
Right, so after finishing a novel there’s something you have
to do with it. Put it away. I’m putting this one away and I’m not going to open
it for six weeks. In the mean time, I’m going to take a stab at my absolutely unpublishable
novel, and see if I can do anything with it. And once that project is moving or
not, it’ll be time to start my next project. It already has a name, but I think
I’ll hold off on the details just yet. In the mean time, I have to go bask in
the glory of the awesomeness that comes with finishing a novel, you know the
part where you’re all “I’m done! I’m done!” even though, it’s really just the
beginning of the road. Man, novel writing is hard, long work. Why do I love it
so much?
So my question of the day is, considering that finishing a
first draft isn’t the end, do you celebrate finishing a first draft and, if you
do, how? Let me know.
