Major Milestone Achieved!

For those of you that have been following me for the last two years, I am happy to announce that I reached a major milestone in the writing of my novel, A Place to Call Their Own.  I finished the rough first draft of my manuscript!  It currently sits at 64,000 words and I can’t be happier to have achieved this goal.  I have been dreaming and goal-setting and blogging about accomplishing this for over two years and the day is finally here.

Now, don’t expect to A Place to Call Their Own available through Amazon or Barnes and Noble any time immediate.  This is a rough, rough, rough draft.  I have a lot of editing to do:  I know there are inconsistencies where I changed character names, traits, background info, etc that I need to go back and change.  Since it’s a historical novel, there are a few facts I need to check.  I am excited to be at this point with the work.

This has been one goal for that I’ve set that I’ve never questioned whether I would achieve it or not.  My mindset has always been, when I get the novel completed.  This was just like setting the goal to quit smoking (which by the way, I celebrate 15 years smoke-free this April) and going back to school to complete my bachelor’s degree.  It was a never a question of if, but a question of when.

I’ve been reminded of many things about goal setting and dream chasing along the way.  It’s taken many different incarnations of routine and schedules to get the writing done.  I might even put out there, it’s taken a change of work schedule to accommodate writing and productivity.

And I’ve learned a lot about the writing process as well.  I’ve learned about story structure and how to write effective, interesting dialogue.  I think the most important thing I’ve learned recently is the need to have a well developed outline ready to go.  It seems that most of my stumbling blocks came when I wasn’t sure where the plot was going.  Once I figured things out, the writing just started flowing.  I’ve probably written more in the last three weeks than I had written in the previous six months, seriously.

Thank you for all your support and wish me luck in my editing process.  Have a great day everyone!