Finishing the draft

I’ve just finished the first draft of a new novel I’ve been writing.

This new book is fairly short - 60,000 words - and has come together pretty quickly. I only started it on my birthday back in January, so the first draft was finished in five months.

In some ways I prefer that. It was exciting to write and quite emotional in places.

It’s a new direction for me, aiming squarely at the kind of fantasy audience which lapped up Harry Potter, How To Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda (I call it ‘teens of all ages’).

There's plenty of action in it, but some big themes too. In many ways it’s the most personal thing I’ve ever written, full of stuff about how I see the world, so will be interesting to see if it resonates with people.

The process of writing a novel is like climbing one mountain (first draft) and then finding out you have a load more mountains to come!

Next stage is to send it out to a few ‘beta’ readers who’ll give me some first impressions. I’ll collate all that and make changes where I agree.

After that, structural and copy edits and who knows how many drafts it will go through. Then to the business of querying agents to see if there’s anyone out there who wants to take me on.

More on this soon, but it’s great to have finished a new piece of work.