Sitting at 95,735 words long, I’ve just finished the first draft of my novel.

I can’t even begin to explain how happy I am about this. I want to jump up and down and tell the world how elated I am. More then a year of my life has been spent working on this project. While I’m far from done, the first big step is finished.

Today just happens to be my co-writer’s birthday. He wrote the first part of the story by hand. 70 pages of hand written notes and ideas were handed over to me a little over 9 months ago. I’ve birthed a baby so to speak! I’m going to tell him tonight at dinner and hand him the last page of our novel inside of his birthday card.

Over the next several weeks I’m going to do an edit of the entire book. The idea is to make sure that there aren’t any inconsistencies. To make sure the story flows well and to correct any mistakes I find. Then I’m going to send it off to my first beta reader, who also happens to have taught English for forty years. After she’s read it, I’ll do one last edit before sending it out to my other beta readers for feedback.

I’m excited to be onto the next faze of this process! Ron has already started our second book. It is something darker and more sinister and in an entirely different universe then the one I’ve been living in for nearly a year. We had the idea for the second book while sitting out a coffee house, bouncing ideas. When I’ve finished the edits from the first, then I’ll finely get my hands on the new one. I’ll get to start turning the second into another first draft.

Have I mentioned how much I love my life?