The Hard Part is Done... (or is it?)

 

 

As of yesterday, at 1739 hrs, the first draft of my first novel, Dream Walker, was finished. It only took three hundred and eighty eight days to write my 95,000 word Sci-Fi Fantasy Adventure! Way too long in my mind, until a kind author at a workshop I recently attended gave me a pat on the back and said, "That is a very fast pace for a first novel. It took me 5 years to write my first."

Which made me think -- Aislen and Raze, Mathis and Preston, Sabine, Sigmund, Troy and Genesis have been telling their story to me since 2003. I finally made an attempt to write it in 2006 but put it away when I hit my first, real writer's block. I drug her out and dusted her off again last October and decided she would be my sole focus for 6 months. (That's when I imagined she would be done. HA!)

But rather than start my clock in '03, I started it when I got REAL about it -- last year.

Amid all the distractions of 2011 -- my separation from my husband, moving, a criminal court case involving my children, a work schedule from hell, taking my daughter to audition for The Voice and all the other day to day chores of life -- Dream Walker was my priority. If I couldn't get to her, I was daydreaming about her. I had long conversations with Raziel during my commutes. I doodled ideas while I worked. I wrote her during every lunch break, and I listened to playlists I imagined my characters would listen to, to stay in the mood when I didn't have time to write.

And then yesterday, with absolutely no fanfare or ticker tape, she was done.

I sat there and looked at the words on the screen.

"Now what?"

Gee... I thought WRITING the book was going to be my biggest challenge.

Now I have to get people to want to READ it... even BUY it! 

I need it edited. I need to decide if I am going to try to publish traditionally, by getting an agent and a publisher.

Or am I going to take the cutting edge route and self-publish her?

So much to consider, decisions to be made, work to be done.

Oh... and another novel to start writing.

I guess I didn't finish anything --- I've only just begun!

Shannan