My First Draft

On Thursday I finished the first draft of my new novel. I have been ambitious with this one. This was my first full length novel. I am more of a fan of short stories. It was a thriller/mystery genre. Before I had specifically stuck to gothic fantasy. It was a challenge and I wasn’t sure about it for most of the time I was writing it. I liked 3 things about it (the beginning, the middle and the end) and everything in between felt a bit like a means to an end. Fortunately, actually reading back through what I have written, it doesn’t actually feel like that and some of those ‘means’ have actually made for the addition of interesting characters and development of the setting, so have probably helped me out a lot in the long run.

I have noticed a few things I am guilty of with writing a longer novel. I start off incredibly descriptive and then that level of description just wanes as the novel progresses and I speed towards the end. That is something I will have to fix in my second draft because I felt there was a lot of beauty in the description at the start and I just lose it by trying my best to get to the thrilling parts as quickly as possible. I am guilty of forgetting key bits of information as the novel develops- I kept changing my mind about some initials and they have ended up probably being every letter in the alphabet by the close of the novel. I am guilty of having terrible handwriting yet insisting on handwriting it all- that is going to be a bit of a puzzle when it comes to typing it up.

On the whole, I have enjoyed writing something a bit different. I have ended up creating something that is so much more about sisterhood and motherhood than I ever initially anticipated, and I am proud of the results.

I have decided I am going to leave it to settle for a while before typing up. I might distract myself with tidying up my writing space and making it feel special again (it has become a bit neglected over lockdown) and maybe creating myself a bit more of a rigid schedule. I feel like I have totally fallen into a lifestyle of doing what I want to when I want to do it which I know won’t be as feasible “in the real world,” and when I go back to work.

We’ll see if any of this happens in my blog post next week 😊