I have just finished the first draft of my current work in progress.
The project was/is a contemporary fantasy set in London but also featuring period pieces in Alaska, Boston, Nagasaki and New York. It’s about how long relationships can really last, the nature of love, obsession, fanaticism, non-direct uses of fusion reactors, the nature of reality and whether you can ever really know someone.
At least that’s what I think it’s about right now.
It’s also got plenty of action and a fair bit of London gets wrecked in the process.
Technically, it’s my second draft but I rewrote the entire story from scratch, using a new story design, on the grounds that there were several structural issues with the first version, it was too short for its market and I had left it so long since I wrote the first version I was a different person. I did this because a) I liked the idea but hated the first draft I wrote and b) I needed a project last year that required little research to give me room to research my next project.
Constant readers may have worked out it is the project called (at the moment) Forever.
In a couple of weeks I will begin the next draft by reading through the current version (the time gives me some distance) and begin the structural changes I feel I need to make before swinging into the detail work of polishing up the draft (line, dialogue, continuity, length, etc.). But for now I am done. It’s a nice feeling knowing I can still finish a full draft, that I can get into a rhythm of writing every day and hold a story that size in my head for the time necessary to write it while working.
Pass the beer.