This is one of those ‘may be embarrassing to look back a year later’ posts.
Today I began the second draft of my novel, The Ferry. It was written as part of National Novel Writing Month in November 2009 and you can see the play-by-play on its fevered creation in this thread on the Quarter to the Three forums. In 21 days I wrote a complete short novel — 50,810 words in total. It had started out as a short story back in 1993 that outgrew its short story status before eventually being abandoned. Over the years I revisited it, trying to get it steaming along again, one time even switching it from its first person narrative to third person but I could never figure out where to go with it and so it remained unfinished.
The ‘just for fun’ approach of NaNoWriMo took the pressure off, as I briefly recount in this blog post written the day after completing it.
The second draft will probably take a good deal longer to finish but I am relieved and happy to have gone through the experience.
Ho ho!
And so tonight, after a number of false starts, I begin the second draft. My marginal goal is to have the second draft done before NaNoWriMo 2011 begins. That gives me four months. I vow to update on this come October 31st!