NaNoWriMo Update: The End
Hi! It’s two weeks into December, and wouldn’t you know, I’ve been finished with the first draft of my book for the exact same time now. 51,767 words later, the first draft of Just Us is complete. It’s pretty bad.
Just a fan cover
made my me, ofc, the book’s biggest fan.
“I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box, so that later, I can build castles.”
A lot went into writing this book. My time, energy, and sanity. All my evenings in November were spent wringing my hands, wondering if it were possible to actually write 50,000 words of a nebulous thought that was bouncing around in my head. And now we’re here, after two weeks of staring blankly at a wall to take the buzzing thing that is my brain and turn it back into a comfortable mush. Now we’re here, with a shitty first draft, and the time and space I need to edit it.
So it begins. Draft two.
Photo by Richard Dykes from Unsplash
Sort of. I just ordered a print copy of it from FedEx (because what millennial in this day and age has a printer?), and, like many writers, I will edit by hand. It’s my preferred medium, though admittedly inefficient, but there’s some sort of comfort in having a hard copy and a red pen ready to go.
I have to admit, this is something I’ve also struggled with a lot - the editing process that is. I never know when to stop, sometimes coughing up dozens of drafts before I’m satisfied with a piece. This will be another learning process - and one that will consume a lot of time and energy though there’s certainly a less strenuous deadline to work by (and by that, I mean I have no deadline - though I should probably set one).
Anyway, this is mostly an incoherent, congratulatory blog post for myself. I’m really proud I made it to the end, and I’m even more excited to work on crafting a story that, as my boyfriend says, could actually be really good.
