I Finished The First Draft Of My Novel

It became odd

On Monday I finished my novel and now I'm as happy as could be!

It is 121,000 words, as long as Pride and Prejudice and a little shorter than Tales from Earthsea. When I began writing it in January, I thought it would be about 50,000 words and would be a collection of a number of stories in a science fiction future. Now it’s just four connected novellas. Each of them got weirder the more I wrote them. They are nested (Somewhat like Cloud Atlas). It’s still mostly science fiction, but more centrally, it is about mortality.

Labyrinths keep popping up in each story, unplanned.

At present I'd give it 4/10. Maybe 3/10! It's fundamentally rough, skeletal, underdeveloped. But it can be read from beginning to end, and next year I think I can make it 10/10.

My plan is tentatively to leave it be at least until 2024, but I suspect I'll keep getting ideas to jot down.

What jotting looks like

I will probably also tighten a few chapters for the sake of sharing. I’ve felt very secretive about sharing scenes in public, but I’ll probably put a few up next year.

Anyway, I’m over the moon. I couldn’t have done it without the time and thoughts of friends, so big thanks to everybody who’s given advice, ideas, and feedback, in particular,

Paraselenae

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A nest.