Drafting is my favorite part of writing, hands down. I love feeling compelled by the story, the hope that a first draft brings ("This will be the one!"), finding out about your characters as you go, and watching your outline fall beautifully into place (or not! That can be fun too). I just wrote "The End" for the seventh time and I have to say, I'm kind of sad that the rough draft is finished. Because now, for me, comes the hard part.
First there's the waiting to hear back from your critique partners, wondering if they're going to love it or hate it or at the very least have some helpful feedback. Then there's the revising, which I've gotten better at thanks to NaNoReviMo, but I still don't love. It's difficult for me to change a story once I've imagined it a certain way. Of course, it's also the thing I need the most help with, which is where those betas and CPs come in. Which requires more waiting as you revise and send, revise and send, hopefully improving with each round.
And then, of course, comes the really hard part. The querying. I've been at this long enough not to get my hopes up with every request or let my day be ruined by every rejection, but it's still a nail-biting, hair-pulling process. Everyone always says to distract yourself with another project while you query, but querying can be a full-time job sometimes. Especially if you get any revise and resubmits while you're at it. And I find it mentally difficult to move on when I'm in the thick of it. This year, however, I already have another project waiting in the wings that I'm hoping will keep me distracted. I also want to revise my last novel that I never really queried. So we'll see.
Either way, I'm gonna miss the writing. It is, after all, why we do this.
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