100% and Beyond

I finished the rough draft this week. I'd hoped to get it done by Monday at the latest, but it took until Wednesday. I spent a few minutes last night going over the final pages and fixing mistakes and such, as I usually do with the previous day's material. I went a little over the 80k word count goal I had, and that's okay. I'd kind of expected to. I've known that I was going to have to go back and fill in some descriptions of the environments. In some places I described things more. In some places I merely mentioned the name of the location.

Descriptions of people were similar. When certain characters first appeared, I spent some time on description but not so much later on. I probably need to add a few details here and there. None of it will take a long time. Then why not do that to begin with and save time later? For some things, mostly people, I did. However, in the beginning I didn't always have a firm visualization of a location, for instance. As the story progressed and characters visited the location more, the better I could picture it and the more details I could add. Using that, I can strengthen the original description of a locale.

After going over the previous day's work last night, I set the book aside and watched some television. I'm horribly behind on that. Part of figuring out a schedule that includes French and writing involved where to cut out time for writing. Television ended up getting cut, especially days when I was tired and words took forever to type.

The next step is to read through the book and see if it works. I know there are things I could've done differently. Are those things critical to the story? I hope not. I'm hoping it holds together and just needs minor changes. The scene in which the protagonist has dinner with her parents. Should I cut that? Maybe so. We'll see. If the read through goes well, the step after that is to go through fixing and polishing things. Dialogue, prose, descriptions, characterizations, etc. After that it'll be time to put it aside for at least thirty days so I can come back to it with "fresh eyes" afterward.

If the read through doesn't go well, I'm going to have to figure out how to fix the book. I'd like to sell it to a publisher if I can. That means it has to be perfect. Publishers' ideas of perfect are different from readers' ideas, so any changes would be for what I know publishers expect. The thirty days of letting it rest would come afterward. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. The silver lining to having to fix things this way is that it would make the story better overall.

Have a great weekend.