Finishing a rough draft on an 80,000-word or 90,000-word manuscript is a thrilling moment. Despite my misleading title of this blog post, I don’t type “the end” right away. Because finishing the rough draft is only the beginning!

Yesterday I finished my rough draft to the novel I began on November 1st. I finished with under 79,000 words in 44 days. This sort of sprint works well for me personally, though I know it wouldn’t for many other writers. Now, I’m in for the marathon of revising, editing and rewriting.

This was a fascinating story in how it transformed from one thing to another. My character truly took on a life of her own, which was my goal. I wrote in limited third person—only through the eyes of my protagonist. I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could dig deep enough and make a character vivid and deep without the use of additional points of view. As I read through the manuscript, I get a sense of relative success, but I’ll count on my beloved critique partners and agent for the final verdict. Overall, I’m pleased.

On a total side note, I want to highlight some fantastic blogs I’ve been reading lately.

James Scott Bell has some brilliant reflections on NaNoWriMo, which he did for the first time this year:

http://killzoneauthors.blogspot.com/2010/12/10-writing-tips-from-nanowrimo.html

http://killzoneauthors.blogspot.com/2010/12/10-writing-tips-from-nanowrimo.html

I’ve struggled with this before: http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2010/12/i-hate-my-book.html

My agent did a week-long series on Unfortunate Trends a little while back – all of this is important for writers and readers to know!