I finished the first draft of Part One [of Four, for now...] last Thursday night. It clocked out at 41,000 words and 151 pages in Word or LibreOffice, depending on which machine I was using at the time. Without preamble, I handed my netbook to my husband and let him read it. This was without any editing on my part – just writeomgwritewritewritemustgetitdone and then Here, Read it.
I have no clue if I can even explain to you how nerve-wracking it was/is to let anyone, even my own husband, read my writing. Especially this. But I did. I grabbed a book off my shelf and buried myself in the corner of the couch and read while he read.
Occasionally I leaned over to see where he was.
Of course I did.
A few hours later, he set the netbook down and looked at me with something akin to admiration (!!) in his eyes and said, “Wow…”
To which I stupidly responded, “Wow, what?”
He shook his head, grinning, and held his hand up for a high five. “Just wow. It’s really good, hon.”
Tentative high five. “You think so?”
He laughed. “Yes.”
Then we sat and talked about the story, what I could change, what he liked, what didn’t work, what didn’t make sense, plot holes, etc. We talked about the following three parts and how they fit with this particular seat-of-the-pants writing I did since I introduced A LOT more stuff into the story than originally intended. He told me he didn’t like the name of one of my characters. I sniffed at that.
But, hey. First part done. Someone has read it. Someone has reaffirmed this whole crazy endeavor.
So.
Here is where I am waffling. Do I go back and edit Part One? Flesh it out, fix the holes, make it shinier and keep reworking it until it’s quite polished and happy and then send it to Beta readers? Do I find another Alpha reader? Any volunteers?
OR
Do I keep going and write Part Two, then Three, then Four, thereby completing this whole massive saga just to get it out of my head and into some coherent form on paper?
I will probably end up doing both.
But, the key word in that sentence is “doing.”
Holy shit, you guys, I’m doing this.
