It's A Story!

[Peg Herring]

If you're tired of hearing about my WIP, you'll be glad to hear that I finished it yesterday. Now, "finished" doesn't mean publishable or even submitable. It just means that I now have a story that goes from Point A, a murder, to Point B, a solution. And the best part is, it feels right.

There's a character who isn't right, but now that I know what she did, I know how to fix her. There are of course oodles of other things to fix: time lines, foreshadowing moments, and details, not to mention the dreaded syntax and grammar twins. But it's all there, a coherent Something. And the symmetry that I need so much is there, maybe not perfectly there, but what goes around comes around, and I like that in a book.

I will do a printout and read it through, making the changes I know must be made, and then it will be time for it to sit for a while. When it has rested, and when I have some distance from it, the time will be right to tune it, test it, and get some feedback. Then it might be submitable, and hopefully publishable. It's a long process, but the first step, the one where I know that a huge lump of words has become a novel, is perhaps the most satisfying for me.

[Peg Herring]

Me too. Just wish the rest of the world would take a back seat and let me get at it!

[Dana King]

Congratulations! The way I think, you have the hard work done. I'm one of those who enjoys tweaking and fixing things in the revision process. The first draft is heavy lifting. I know I always feel a sense of relief when I have got all the way to the end of the story, even though I know there's a lot of work to be done.