After 16 days of "writing abandon" I completed my 50K - I would have finished sooner, but I came down with a monster cold while simultaneously running around the Virginia Horse Center for our State Finals Horse Show. Amazing since I shook in my boots the first time I sat behind my laptop's keyboard and sat down to write a novel.
After several 30 minute word sprints to keep me motivated, on Day 26 I completed the novel. 79,046 words of a first draft. Granted, the draft is ROUGH as a cat's tongue, but it's a full length first draft!
Day 27 - I took a much needed day off. But my son bugged me to death about getting the chance to read it, so I published it as a quick .pdf and put it on our Nook for him to read, warning him that it may contain sentences that don't make sense and I slip into first person now and then when I didn't mean to. He said, "I don't care," and read half the book in one sitting.
Day 28 - The editing begins! Friends warned me that it may take 6 months up to 4 years to edit novel, and I wanted to leave it on the computer and never touch it again. I edited the first 3 chapters and ended up adding 1K more words of description while removing about another 500. As I complained about how rough my novel was and how I didn't know whether or not to finish it, my son chimed in "It's great! I don't know what you're talking about." And that 11 year old shot of courage will carry me through a little while longer.
Soon I'll be asking friends if the'll do a beta read for me - already have one or two takers. If you'd like to give an opinion, drop me a line! Thanks!
