Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Rough draft is done...more or less...

I've just typed the last word, "water," in the rough draft of the new novel. The book came out much shorter than I'd hoped, mostly because I deleted an entire section halfway through. It just didn't fit with the rest of the novel. I have, however, come up with a new sub-plot that I'll introduce. I just haven't decided yet if I'm going to go back and put it in this draft, or just work it into the second draft.

That plus adding in all of the description that I tended to leave out should give me the word length I need.

All I know is that I'm happy to be done! Now I'll take a break from the manuscript for a few weeks, and attack it with a fresh perspective later.

2 comments:

Keith said...

Congrats on finishing. I guess you are about a third of the way through and now the deadly rewrites start.

As far s the last work, you got it wrong. The last word should be Mayonnaise , as in Richard Brautigan's "Trout Fishing in America:. He ends it with:

"I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word Mayonnaise."

It makes less sense to write:

"I always wanted to end a book with the word Water."

KPG

Anonymous said...

Good stuff J. As you might know, I'm nearing the end of my 2nd rewrite. I think it might be my 5th by the time I have a polished manuscript to send out.

As for mayonnaise, you could always have the MC sitting in a cafe at the end of the novel and say something to the waiteress "I said no mayonnaise."

Just a thought.