This past weekend, I achieved my goal of completing a rough draft of the first half of my novel. It is 6 chapters out of 12 chapters complete, and as I mentioned previously, I used Hedy Czu’s Before you write a word: Designing your Novel as a guide (a gift from my mentor JW).
To my surprise, writing the first half of the novel was not as hard as I thought it would be. I reviewed Czu’s writing guide thoroughly, took notes, and developed my Writer’s Wall in as much detail as possible from this original point form chart (see photo). Once I had all this in place to act as a reference, the actual story flowed quite quickly.
I ended up with about 30,000 words. From what I’ve researched online, Fiction is typically around 55,000 words total (subject to genre – Harlequin Romance novels for example have strict guidelines, and Fantasy books tend to be longer). So I am feeling good about the fact that at least what I’ve written so far is meeting length standards.
I’ve turned over my draft to JW for her review. And I trust that she’ll give me an honest review. If it’s complete crap – it might be back to the planning stages for me. If there are no major flaws with what I’ve put together so far, when she returns it to me, I am expecting that she will have found some editing for me to do. If everything comes up roses, I anticipate that the rough draft of the complete novel will be done within three months from now maximum.
Eventually, I think it will be a worthwhile endeavour to have a professional editor go over the finished manuscript, whether I decide to go the self-publishing route or not.
So, here I am. Nervous that JW may completely dislike what I’ve done so far, but thrilled with having written half a novel anyway.
For the writers out there, did you find a professional editor worth the expense?
For everyone else, have you done anything recently that you’re especially proud of ?
Cheers everyone! Have a great day 🙂
