Thursday, September 11, 2008

novel progress: draft complete

Finished up the current rewrite of my new novel this morning. The ending sort of snuck up on me--I'd thought it was going to happen in about 20 more pages, but then suddenly, the characters got themselves to a point where the story just needed to end. It makes me feel a little dizzy, actually.

I'm not quite sure what to make of it. But if I know one thing, it's that endings are definitely not written in stone, and it's pretty likely this one will change, once I start revising.

I've been writing this draft longhand, to try to shake things up, so now I've got about 140 handwritten pages that need to be typed up (editing as I go, of course). I'm curious to see what I've got. I tend to keep pushing ahead all the time when I'm writing a draft like this, so rereading it will feel oddly fresh for me. I've spent a lot of time with these characters, and I'm glad that I'll get to visit with them for a while longer.

My goal is still to have a draft ready to send out by January, though that seems ambitious at the moment. (Especially since this fall is very, very very busy with productions, freelance work, soccer coaching, some travel, etc.) Still, I've got my 5am-6:45am slot every day (which I actually gave up yesterday, in order to do a freelance gig, but I won't do that often).

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