VOLUME ONE, ROUGH DRAFT: COMPLETE!!!

The rough draft of Volume 1 is officially finished! I finished at 59, 026 words. I plan on celebrating with preliminary editing and organization of my notes. Tonight. Not now. Now, I eat breakfast. With any luck, I will be able to taste it. Thank you, Mr. Sinusy-Cold-Thing, for helping me to finish my book. :)

I've already completed a first read-through of everything up through page 174-ish, so I'm a step ahead there. The initial read-through with minimal editing is crucial to fixing the overall flaws before I fine tune anything. (Thank you for the basics of logic, Stephen King: On Writing!)

The last chapter and a half are a jumble of sketchy present-tense notetaking and straight third-person POV prose (hence ROUGH draft), but I think it'll edit out okay once I'm not relying on the Dayquil to get me through it. I go with the Moe Conn theatre adage "Done is good" in this case. The things I wanted to happen, happened, in some ways more abbreviated than others. In other ways, I'll have to cut and cut and cut. But getting the story out, start to finish, is a big deal for many writers. I work well under pressure, I suppose. It just took a few 1-3 week deadlines to make me get moving: Halloween planning, Wedding planning, dress making, NaNoWriMo, a head cold, sore throat, bleary eyes, new contact lenses, laundry, dishes, company coming, and a half-dozen other things. And instead of doing all the things above, I procrastinated today and finished the novel. :D I mean, I prioritized the completion of the novel so I could focus on those other things. Yeah. That's what I meant.

So, when I'm sick and I wake up two hours before my alarm goes off, I finish novels. Good to know!

Sighing in relief now!

Cuddles,

Tamara