Sprinting for the Finish Line


I’ve almost finished the first draft of The Case of the Missing Drag Queen. I woke up yesterday believing just one chapter stood between me and “the end.” Close. Halfway through that chapter, I realized another chapter was needed to finish the story. This time, I’m sure. One more chapter and the first draft is done.

Whether today. tomorrow, or Wednesday, I’ll finish this week. That’s about ten days later than predicted, but still a good eight months faster than it took to write any of my first four novels. I’m amazed, and after abandoning several false starts, thrilled to finally finish a story.

The much shorter time to finish is due largely to changes to my writing process, discussed ad nauseum in earlier posts. Spurred by my rapid progress, I pushed myself to finish. I’ve written for an hour or more almost every day since the middle of June. The closer I got to the end, the more determined I was to finish.

For the past three weekends, other than watching Georgia and Kentucky football games, all I did was write. I haven’t been to the gym since May and do well to run once a week — if that. Miraculously, I haven’t gained any weight, but with winter just around the corner, I haven’t lost any either.

Next weekend, I’ll start revising and editing, which — at least for me — requires more concentration than writing a first draft, but goes a lot faster. Unless I run into big problems, I should finish by the following weekend.

I’ve done no editing or revising along the way — a first for me. I’m anxious to read the story from the beginning and curious to see how much revising is needed. No matter how much I do, the manuscript will go through three more rounds of editing before the novel is published. The better it is going into the publication process, the better the finished product will be. I’ll keep you posted.


3 responses to “Sprinting for the Finish Line”

  1. I’ve been bad at commenting on things lately even if I reas them, but just wanted to cheer you on to the finish line for this book! It sounds really cool 🙂 this reminds me I still need to read Whippersnapper and Happy Independence Day – have owned them but part of my mentality (with you and several other authors) is “I don’t want to run out of books from this author to read!” And thus will procrastinate on at least one of their books so I have it in case of emergency (aka needing to read something by that author I haven’t yet). I’m weird, I know. Anyway. All the best to you finishing the draft of what sound sounds like an awesome story!