Clink the Champagne Glasses

Perhaps the best part of collaborative writing is having someone to toast with when the work is done. Around 10:00 last night, Kent wrote the final words of our first draft! Woohoo! We popped the cork on a bottle of champagne and celebrated in style (if “sprawled on the sofa watching a movie” qualifies as “in style”).

Two weeks ago we had 14 scenes left to write, and now they’re all checked off. The manuscript came in at just a hair under 110,000 words, which is in line with most of our work.

Of course we can’t rest on our laurels for too long. There’s still plenty of work left to do to get this novel in shape. We’ve been debating our best course of action, whether to immediately go through and address the things we know are issues, or to let the manuscript rest for a little while before doing a full read-through and then tackling the edits. Both approaches have their merits. In the first case, the work is fresh in our minds and it should be easy (ha!) to fiddle with the things we’re not happy with. In the second case, if we step away and lose our infatuation with it, then when we come back we will be better able to see over-arching issues. In either case, this will only be the first of several editing passes. There’s still a lot of work ahead.

Luckily for us we each have a partner we can rely on when the work is tough, and celebrate with when we reach milestones.

Go Team Skelley!