Done With Drafting

So to speak.

But yes, I finished the rough draft of A Trace of Moonlight at about 2 AM this morning. Odd really, because I’ve been fighting the story so much the last few weeks and last night it was like my head just snapped because it was TIME. Sat down and cranked out 3000k in about 2 hours, which is ridiculous for me.

Is it the best prose I’ve ever written?

Nope.

There is quite a bit of revising to do, and not much time to do it in, but I suppose that’s always par for the course with me.

I am going to give myself a day off, though. Too much to get done with Christmas coming anyway, and by the gods I am going to fire up some sort of game and play guilt free tonight if it kills me.

In some ways, getting the words on the page is the easy part. Not that writing is ever really *easy,* but I let myself go a bit when I’m writing down the bones. Some pages are just dialogue, for example, with some basic notes as to what I’ll need to emphasize when I come back. Sometimes I change my mind part way through a scene or a major plot point, but since I already know I may change my mind again, I leave a note and just keep on writing, as though I’ve already gone back to change it. (Ah, the glories of being a panster.) Usually by the time I come around to fixing it, I’ve already refined what it was I wanted to say in the first place, so things fall into place better.

I suppose it’s a bit like sculpting. The draft is the metal rods, the words to which I’ll craft the finer edges of plot. I’ll shave some off in places and add more in others, but without a strong foundation to start with, the rest of it is meaningless. (And likely to collapse upon poking. Plot holes. Logic holes. You  might be able to get away with a small one here or there depending on your writing skill, but too many little holes start looking an awful lot like a great big one, the further away you move from it.)

Still. It’s nice to have this part off my back. It’s also nice to realize that I managed to write it in about five months. (See? See? I *could* be a a two book a year author if I wanted! Maybe. On the other hand? I also like having hair.)

But the bones are down.

Now the real work begins.

Right after I kill these Darkspawn.