Woo hoo! S**t first draft done!
Now to sculpt it into a book for you all
If you’re listening to the voiceover - Apologies for the slightly croaky voice - the pollen count is high here today.
Welcome
I have great news! I’m super chuffed to report that I have just completed that s**t first draft I spoke about in last week’s Substack. Between lots of LWS Writing Hours, time with the cabin crew and consulting with my Muse, I managed to mission through those last 18,000 words! The 80K word target was hit yesterday and a week earlier than my goal.
I’m always surprised just how fast those words come for me once I jump the hurdles of self-doubt that seems to be around the 20K and 40K word marks. Thankfully I was ready for them this time and leapt over them without allowing them to slow me down too much.
Last night and today I allowed myself time off to recover. Writing at such an intense rate really does take more out of you than you realise. My celebrations included a trip to the post office, finishing my LWS friend, Jacqueline Ward’s latest book - ‘The Replacement’ and then an evening watching ‘Big Bang Theory’ - I know, I party hard! Today was spent at Body Combat and then tidying the house that, as ever, had got neglected whilst I was in the zone. As long as I have a clean mug and available snacks I’m pretty content as I write so luckily very little washing up was created. But it was great to move my body and clear the house, both needed it!
Next comes the read through, that I’m excited to do and see if it reads as well as it sounded in my mind. There is going to be plenty of restructuring to do as I just throw the words out and pop them into a succinct order later. I learned long ago not to number the chapters till later as they rarely stay in the same order as I originally write them. I simply write ‘chapter’ to separate them and add the numbers later - I detest going back and correcting them. Just one more part of the editing process to add to the already long list.
This is my least favourite bit but the most important part of the process. Honestly, this time I’m excited as it’s not been too long since the edits of my last book ‘Where the Pieces Land’ were done.
However, I do find that this is where my dyslexia lets me down. I know the words I wanted to say but spellcheck rarely understands. This not as tricky as it used to be as I found that typing it in Google usually gets me to the word eventually and assures me that I’m using it in the right context. I’m lucky enough to have my eldest son as my editor who is not only amazing with words and structure but also understands how my brain works! What will be fun with this manuscript is that he knows very little about it as it was written so quickly. I’m eager to hear his thoughts.
If you’d like to follow the daily progress the best place to find me is over on Instagram or Facebook. It’d be great to see you there too!
Much love, take care, Claire x
Here’s a little video for you of the journey my book has been taking! Find more like this on my Instagram