Finished!

[msagara]

I've finished the first draft of CAST IN FURY.

I'm curious, though. For me, when I say I'm finished a novel, what I really mean is I've finished the first draft of the novel that I've been working on. I still have to go through it, line-edit, revise, fact check (and, honestly, it is not an understatement to say I am not very good at this last part ), tighten, clarify, etc. The book is not actually ready to head out the door (or in my case, be thrown out the door in frustration, because at a certain point, moving commas does not help) but to me -- it's finished when I have a complete first draft.

What stage in a book is finished, for you, if you write them?

Comments

[msagara.livejournal.com]

I think, for me, the hardest part is the first draft, and it's the place in which much hand-wringing and certainty of abject failure frequently occurs. So when -that's- finished, I say "I'm finished".

The revisions and editorial stuff that comes after that feels productive, and it feels more like I'm in control of the book, because I can clearly see it is a book.

But my first draft tends to be relatively clean, because there's a lot of internal fussing and revising before I hit the end stretch. When I have a first draft, I have something that it will not kill me for other people to read. Whereas some people write everything first, and then refine in subsequent drafts; my iterations are partial throughout the process. So first draft is probably also a term that is defined entirely by process.