Posted by: C.D. Reimer in 2009 on 8 Apr 2009
When I finished chapter 35 of my first novel this week, I fell shy of hitting the magic 90,000 words / 500 pages mark. (My chapters have gotten shorter since I switched from writing in longhand to using a typewriter.) Ten months after I started writing the rough draft, I still have 200 pages to write over the next two months before I'm done. A long journey to get this far with the end now in sight.
What will happen after the rough draft is done? Nothing.
I will forget everything about my first novel by hiding the reading copy (double spaced pages printed on orange paper to discourage editing with a red pen), taking down the sticky notes from the brainstorming board, and working on other projects for three months. When that time passes, I will spend a month evaluating the rough draft, going through all the notebooks, and putting together a detailed chapter-by-chapter outline. Then spend the next four months creating the first draft from scratch, take a one month break, and spend another four months polishing the second draft. I should have a finished manuscript to shop around in Summer 2010.
I'm looking forward to the three month break. I have a finished vampire novella that I spent two years working on that need to be polished for publication. When that's done, I can drop the novella into my short story collection to shop around. Still got two dozen short stories I'm flogging around in a cruel world of rejection slips. I'll be outlining my second novel that will be written while editing my first novel.
When I started out three years ago to get serious about being a writer, I thought things would get easier after a while. Kinda like the Sprint commercial that's being shown at the movie theaters where a writer gets a call from his agent that a deal went through, Hollywood producers transforming his story into something else, and he's giving approval while holding hands with his girlfriend in a car dealership. Although that commercial is about how one phone call can ruin a good thing, I get ticked off since my writing life is nothing like that.
I'm still waiting for the girlfriend and car dealership thing to happen.