1st Draft Novel Completed

That is right! On January 21, 2013, I was able to complete the first draft of my very first novel. I was ecstatic! I was thrilled, overjoyed, and most of all...relieved. It was an excellent feeling to experience. One that I hope all writers will get to experience once their stories are complete. After printing out the first draft, I tucked it away in a drawer and walked away from it. My mind needed a break from it. To forget about it. Two weeks have just about passed and I've decided to return to the novel that I wrote.

A few days before those two weeks, I did a little research on how to approach the next step. If you go to Google and search for "finished 1st draft of novel" you get about 11,300,000 results..... Holy crap!! To narrow that down, I clicked on 5 to 8 sites to find the similarities and picked out the methods I know would work well for me. Not to mention I have also currently started reading On Writing by Stephen King to get a little extra assistance.

There is no order to do this. Some of the methods I list here I have taken, plan to take, or are thinking about taking:

1. Take a long break so the mind can relax, focus on more/new creative ideas, and have an open mind when going back to rewrite and edit. (2 to 6 weeks)
2. Read the novel from beginning to end. No editing. Only mark areas to locate grammar, punctuation, misspellings, etc. as you read.
3. Allow others to critique (outside family). More than 5 people.
4. Gather all the notes taken for the novel. Remove bad ideas with fresh ideas that have come up while writing/reading the end of the novel's 1st draft. And improve original good ideas (includes characters, scenes, plot, etc.)
5. Rewrite the outline draft again to better-organize the structure of the story properly.
6. Gather critique suggestions. Change areas that have constant repeated concerns.
7. Rewrite outline to make it as perfect as humanly possible.
8. Rewrite the novel.
9. Find an editor or someone with excellent editing skills.
10. Send out to publishers.