Finished!

Last night at 10:20 pm, I finished the fourth draft of TOSOL. It was kind of a race to the finish line- my goal was to be finished by today, but I also knew that my friend (who is reading this draft) needed it and she seemed to be a bit stressed, so I thought I would give it to her early.

I'm not as happy with the draft as I could be. There are still two or three HUGE changes that I didn't make. One of them was something I've talked about before, that being the MC's mother being crazy. I was really stressing out about that, and I do plan to apply it, but after wailing about it to my critique partner, he finally said "Just leave it the way it is, let me read it, and we'll work it out together." This is why he's awesome- after that, I was able to step back and focus on the rest of the novel.

The revision was really hard, especially at the end. Even though I'd cleaned it up in draft three, I really cleaned it up this time. I made that timeline I posted a picture of, which was invaluable to figuring out what happened when. I cut some scenes and did a complete facelift on others, and I added a few, too.

Now that I'm "finished", I don't know what to do with myself. If I was ever bored, I'd work on my novel. Now... what? I think I may start plotting the rest of next year's NaNo, or at least time-lining out what I already have, since time is such a problem for me.

This morning, I put in the draft for my free proof copy from CreateSpace. They work with NaNoWriMo and give every winner a free proof copy of their book. I didn't do it last year because my book was nowhere near ready by June. While I know TOSOL will be undergoing major changes in the next few months, it's at a place right now that I want to preserve. I really like the MC's mother as a sane woman and I want to keep that draft somewhere before I have to dissolve her mind in the next one. Of course, just as with the films I'm in, I'll probably get the copy and hide it somewhere, but at least I'll have it!