Posted by 89,514 words written. First draft is done. As I look out over Puget Sound a dozen floors up above Seattle, this mighty undertaking reaches a new plateau. “Finishing” the first draft has made me question the point of the first draft.
I know I’m not done. Hell, I feel like I am just getting to know the characters. I thought I knew them when I started writing–after I had done all their backstories. But halfway through my first draft, they all started doing their own thing! The first draft seems like an exercise in seeing how all the characters interrelate. How do they challenge each other? …push each other? …hold each other back?
Now, I can see where I need to go back and adjust the characters (in the earlier sections of the novel) to be their most authentic selves, to be true to who they have become by the end of the novel. The first draft no longer seems like a finishing point–it seems like a means to an end, a way to complete the character sketches. On to the real work of honing this work to a finished novel!