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.

Outline Progress

Making really good progress on my second draft for my outline. At the moment, I'm half way through on getting it completed. I hope to finish the outline off sometime by the end of next week so I can start writing the first draft of the novel.

I have been putting in three to four hours a day...sometimes five hours a day if I'm lucky toward writing. I try not to let an entire day go without accomplishing some form of writing, especially writing for this blog. I usually kick myself in the pants if I do miss a day to write. It just feels wrong when that does occur. But I do what I can to make sure that never happens.

Right now, like I said, I'm about half way through on getting my second outline all typed up and ready to go. I am actually debating though if I should make a third draft for my outline or not...

The first draft is sloppy and is like a skeletal structure for the novel.

The second draft I'm currently slapping on some meat to lengthen it and to give it some more details and descriptions on areas that are too vague.

I'm just unsure if I need to do a third draft outline. I'm tempted to finish this second one and begin writing the novel where I left off.

What do you think? Any suggestions or ideas would be most helpful.