Last night marked the completion of another milestone.  This one perhaps the 2nd most important one to date (with #1 being the decision to actually begin writing a book).

I am proud to say that as of 9:30-ish pm last night, I completed the draft of my Urban Fantasy novel!!  This is doubly big because this is also my 1st completed draft, AND I finished it in about 5 weeks.

(Yes, I’ve been working on my Contemporary Romance since August 2008 and it’s not done yet. I know, I know. It’s coming, trust me.)  😀

And before I go on any longer, just let me make it clear that this is my ROUGH DRAFT that I’ve completed. It has a long way to go before it’s decent enough to see the light of day. But rough or not, that puppy’s donzo!

By rough, I mean rough.  There’s no real character development, no internal GMC’s to be seen, no subplots, & no backstory & history integration. Just a pure execution of the story goal, which in this case is the rescue of a mentor. 

I wrote this story with some plotting items in place (mostly wordbuilding pieces & my main characters’ external goals), but largely I flew by the seat of my pants.  And while I’ll probably ended up tossing out half of what I wrote this time around, I did discover quite a few hidden gems along the way. Things I never would have dreamed of including in my plot outline initially.  I discovered a handful of important characters I’d never met before, stumbled across some juicy subplots sure to blow the lid off of a few characters’ minds, and got wind of a couple of  dark secrets just waiting to be uncovered.

Muah haha <–(evil laughter as I rub my hands together)

I can’t wait to dive into this story properly and start creating & weaving threads together. If you read my last post, you’re aware that my main goal these last two week (via the Savvy Author’s scrimmage challenge) was for me to complete a rough draft of this story for use in my upcoming mentorship program with Lori Wilde.  I’m still nervous about this undertaking, but I feel much better now that I have a solid idea to work with.

Artwork: “Celebration” by Keith Mallet