I sit in a hotel room smiling. I'm smiling because the first draft of my novel, Memories of Arma, is complete. I first embarked on this journey 2 years ago as a method of coping with long periods of time away from home due to work.I look back on the past 2 years of writing and remember fondly the early months, where I typed away without a care in the world. Discovering that my story has a style, establishing the world inside the story and developing characters are things
I remember happily. Crying while I scripted the death of characters was a strange experience and trying to fight myself out of writers block was challenging to say the least. I'm relieved to be past the difficult second half of the novel, where I had to force myself to push on with many revisions made and hours lost plotting out the finale.I remember planning to wrap up the first draft in December 2013. This never happened, but it does make me wonder what the ending would have been like if I had. The finale was coloured so much by recent travels and thoughts that it would have been a very different story.But what about the future? What will the final draft be like? How many sub-plots will be removed and what additions will be made? I know my story needs more attention, but it is interesting to wonder how people will react when they read it. Does it make any sense? Will people like the ending?I can almost see my story like some kind of topographic chart or heart monitor diagram. I can finally see all the key scenes and places. All the highs and all the lows. It is pleasing to have this resolution and finally have an empty mind.I desperately want to leap back into the story and shift chapters around and give it a punchy kick-off, but I think it is best that I get some distance from it for a while. Hopefully then I will have a better perspective over it.Right now I'm looking forward to working on the second draft. The idea of making all these images and crazy thoughts more robust and structured sounds really exciting, but I am certain it will be a difficult process. If it will allow me to do my characters a better service (and if people actually enjoying reading it) then it will all be worth it.Tom