I Finished Writing My Novel!

Last weekend I finished writing my third novel, and every single part of that sentence astounds me. I finished writing my novel at long last, which is incredible and exciting in and of itself, but that also marks my third book written! Whaaaaaa! Crazy.

Of course, this book is no where near to being complete; it is the extreme of all extremes first draft format – but the skeleton’s all complete, now I just need to go back and connect all the bones. Same goes for my second novel. It’s a first draft too, that I’ve left alone all the while when writing my most recent one. Now that this one is done, I’m excited to return to the second one and start all the edits. It will be a long process no doubt, but hopefully by the end I’ll have something I’m really proud of and that I can finally start sending out to publishers and/or agents.

I think this is the process that I’m going to take from now on. Write a book straight through, don’t look back on anything, just let it come out and then when it’s done, move into the next book and do the same thing. That leaves the first book untouched for a minimum of half a year, giving me plenty of time to forgot all its nuances, so that when I do go back to edit it, I can see it through fresh eyes and (hopefully) be the better editor for it.

I’m taking a short break to mentally refresh myself, and then I’ll start in on editing my second novel. I’ve been itching to get back to this one for a while now, so I’m really excited that I’m finally able to. The story’s been fermenting in my mind and I’ve come up with some real great additions that I think will help to tie everything together. Plus, the characters in this book are some of the favourite ones I’ve ever written, and they’re so much fun to play with. I’m really excited to get back to them.

From there, I’ll have to decide what I want to do next. I’m not sure if I want to edit the second book and then go into editing the third book, or if I want to edit the second book and then write a first draft of my next book before returning to edit the third book. I’ll have to see. Really, it will be whatever I feel like at the time, I suppose. Regardless, I’m excited to finally be moving towards the finishing steps of a complete novel.

Writing – it’s exhausting and it’s hard, but, oh man, it’s the best thing in the world.