First draft finished!!! Huzzah!!!

The big news this week is that I’ve finished the first draft of my novel. No time to sit back though as rewrites are looming already.

Last Friday I had some free time so I pushed through to the end and finished the first draft. Currently this first version sits at 91082 words. Since over 60,000 words is considered a novel I have officially written the first draft of my first novel. Did I mention that already?

I will probably take the week to relax but my writing schedule looks as follows:

1. Finish version 1.1 and send it out to alpha readers (hopefully before end of april)
2. Write a short story I’ve had in mind
3. Write an epub on teaching in kindergarten
4. Integrate feedback from alpha readers into draft version 1.2
5. Go over version 1.2 for editing and turn it into 2.0
6. Send 2.0 to beta readers
7. Integrate feedback from beta readers into finalized 2.1 version
8. Start submitting for publication
9. Write another short story I’ve been thinking about
10. Start working on sequel

That’s my laundry list for the moment and as always I’ll keep you up to date.

Critic’s corner:

So yesterday my wife and I went to see the new Tomb Raider movie. It won’t be for everyone. There are a few cool scenes and I enjoyed it though the story is a little cliché. I felt there was a bit of overuse of flashbacks but it is possible in film flashbacks are used differently than in writing.

There is a Chinese expression “no coincidence no novel.” I feel the hardest part of a writer is balancing coincidences so that the story seems in the realm of possibility for the given universe. I felt the coincidences in the movie piled up a bit too much. Also realism was shoved aside on a few cases. It is one thing for a character to say “I’ve been living on this island for seven years” but when it’s a case of “I’ve been living on this island for seven years while a mercenary group has also been on this island but they’ve never noticed me here and never looked for me,” the analytical part of me wants to ask the question: How exactly did you live on the island? Where did you get food? What did you do the whole time?

But it was still an enjoyable story and since my story also has a heroine I paid attention just to see how they dealt with theirs.