First Draft Complete

Well, I finished yesterday. I’ve managed, I think, to bring closure to all three strands of the novel in those final three chapters. I’ve gone: girls, Hani, Renate. Renate is the biggest strand. It is the most important and also the longest, for in the end, this novel is her story. Yet I’m the least satisfied with this last chapter - compared with almost anything else in the whole novel. Is that because it’s so important? I’m in the process of printing the novel out – it’s running at 402 pages (A4 double-spaced) 93,000 words. Over and above my normal editing processes I’m going to try to read it first time through just as a reader. I want to get some sort of feel for how the three strands dovetail. I’m going to try and do this away from my desk – maybe even away from my study. The three strands seemed fine from the timelines I invented and as putting them together was quite exciting. I’ll only now blog about the novel itself after each edit, though today I start the work on the web-site. I’ll probably only start the planning today.