Manuscript with Editor. Now What?

Boom!

After one year and two weeks, draft #6 of my novel manuscript whipped its way to an editor. The adrenaline rush of polishing it to perfection (as well as I could with special thanks to ProWritingAid) under a self-imposed deadline left me exhilarated and drained.

Coming from the legal profession, I had no idea how time-consuming the novel writing process could be! I am used to rocking out legal documents under extremely-tight, on-demand deadlines, then moving on to the next — never the pleasure of lingering over every word for literally months.

I dig it.

But the drafts!

Even after listening to thousands of hours of writers podcasts (Writers Routine and Ink in Your Veins amongst my faves), reading all the craft books on editing and revision (shout-out to Alison K Williams Seven Drafts for the best editing tips!), and participating in The Novelry “Big Edit” program, I was still surprised by how many drafts I needed to complete before things made sense. I am in awe of any writer who finishes something and sends it out into the world - the badassery required to do draft after draft after draft until the story takes shape and the scenes make sense and the characters feel real and the settings spark magic and the dialogue feels real and then you do it all over again after receiving feedback from your agent and editor.

Creamy Coconut Dr Pepper Zero Sugar fueled my last three drafts.

So what is next? I will write blog posts and work through my backlog of book reviews (which piled up during the throes of draft 6).

And I shall start a light dalliance with my next project — I worked in GDrive, Dabble, Scrivener, Word and manual notebooks for my first novel. Next one will be all in Scrivener. . . I think. :) When drafting, I love the ease of working on my phone, iPad, Macbook and PC so appreciate the G Drive and Dabble, but I also tend to have too many pieces of the puzzle scattershot across digital tools and would like to rein it in for this one.

We will see. I can’t wait! 

What’s been your experience with the writing process? I’d love to hear your thoughts and tips in the comments below!