First Draft Completed—127,500 Words

First draft, complete.

I had a writing frenzy last week and pushed my first draft to completion. It's a strange feeling, having it complete after so many months of working on it every single day. It's hard to say precisely how much time I've put into it so far. 

Epilogues are strange.

As with most things in this horror novel, I had a plan going into writing the epilogue. The plan was from about five months ago, though. Since then, the characters and the story have developed in unexpected and surprising ways, meaning I needed to rework the epilogue. 

I finished it last night, and I'm pleased with it. It's a strange balancing act between not prattling on forever and leaving nothing to the reader's imagination and saying so little that it isn't satisfying. I feel as if I've struck a nice balance, though, letting the characters continue with their lives in the reader's imagination. It's one that I would be happy with if I were the reader and not the author.

What's new since last week?

• ~127,500 words
• 100% by my chapter count
• Even more story synchronicities! These are getting to be fun. My spouse and I are discovering all sorts of connections between story parts, characters, themes, etc.
• I'm making a plan for the second draft. I have a few chapters I want to tighten up and then a ton of relatively minor things I want to do. I'm very much looking forward to the second draft and throwing a lot of polish on everything.