A First Draft

Spurred on by the challenge of NaNoWriMo I did something I didn't think I could ever do. I wrote the whole first draft of a book in two weeks. Yeah, granted, not much else got done, but the fact remains that in less than a month I have a whole first draft.

It is very much a first draft. There are scenes that are probably unnecessary and scenes that should be there but aren't. I'm sure there are places where I use the same descriptive phrase twice in close proximity.

There may be threads of the story brought in early on, but never followed through on. There may be inconsistencies in characters and descriptions.

But all of these things can be fixed in revisions.

The first draft is the skeleton. It's more than just an outline - the whole structure is there. But now I get to flesh it out and make it pretty.

I totally credit participating in NaNo for spurring me on to this. I just finished up some revisions on another story and am expecting an official revision letter for When Mike Kissed Emma (coming soon from Wild Rose Press) and I could very easily have taken these couple of weeks and written nothing.

Instead I have a whole book.

So the lesson to be learned from this? Write! You never know where it will take you!