Rough draft complete!

Nine months ago I set an aggressive deadline for completion of the rough draft of the latest incarnation of Companions of the Garden. Failure to complete said draft by 9/22/13 meant giving up the book forever. End of story.

I did this for two reasons.

First, I wanted to create the pressure I thought necessary to push the project to completion.  Second, and perhaps more important, I wanted a decisive litmus test that would determine just how much the book really meant to me. If I wasn’t able to meet the deadline, then it would be clear that the novel wasn’t a priority; that in so many words I didn’t want it enough.

As it turned out, I finished the draft Tuesday night, almost three weeks ahead of schedule, and this in spite of an enormous amount of other work. I finished it not because the deadline was looming, but because I couldn’t stop writing even if I’d wanted to.

Clearly – for better or worse – I do want it enough.

Now, the process involves my turning back to page one and commencing the fine-tuning process, obliterating verbosity, awkwardness, and redundancy, coaxing clarity out of murkiness, diminishing the word count, and, in general, advancing toward the published work I believe my characters deserve.   

9/22/13 was the last deadline on my calendar. It did its job, so expect others to follow.