I just finished a novel. What do I do next? Let it sit.

You've just finished a novel. Maybe you wrote it as part of November's National Novel Writing Month. Either way, you've got this first draft happily sitting there and you're wondering… what happens next?

Before you do anything else…

Let it sit.

No matter what your future plans for your novel, your first step should always be to let it sit for at least a month. You just spend a ton of time throwing words down and you're too close to both the story and the draft to be able to effectively do...