First Draft Done

Yesterday I finished the first draft of AWJ. This is not a cause for celebration, though.

Back when I finished Spectacle's first draft, I celebrated. I even celebrated after Caldera and Blink. Those, I felt, were complete. When I wrote "THE END" on those books, I knew I'd have to go back and edit, but I still felt like the editing wouldn't be too much, and nothing would essentially change about their storylines.

AWJ is incomplete.

Don't get me wrong. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In that respect, the book is complete. That is the only respect in which AWJ looks like a novel. Looking back over the process of writing this one, though, AWJ is as far from complete as a first draft could be. Not surprising at all that the first draft is only 52K words. Whole chunks of the book have gaping holes in them. It's a Swiss cheese novel. I knew it when I wrote THE END, and knowing this made the whole first draft completion a little anti-climactic.

I'm going to be putting AWJ away for a couple weeks. It needs time to ferment, I think. I'll be working on some editing, finishing a couple shorts maybe, and dealing with the whole moving process. After that maybe I can sit down and shred AWJ. Maybe turn it into something worthy of being read by the general populous. *sigh* I still believe in the story, and I won't let it go, but right now it's not half the cause for celebration it ought to be.