It's published - a frozen moment in time

As writers, we spend a long time creating a novel.  For me, the first draft takes four to six months to produce.  I'm normally writing every day, and I write fast.   But that first draft is really the second draft by the time it's completed.

I write longhand, scribbling in liquid ink pen on A6 size Pukka Pads. Over the years I've learned that this particular combination of writing tools provides the smoothest writing experience and allows me to write fast.  I don't set an official word count target for myself, but if I've done less than 600 words that day I feel that I've let myself down. My average is nearer 1,000 words a day,

When I finish that morning's or that afternoon's writing session I go home and write up the text.  (Maybe I should explain that the other essential ingredient for first drafts is my collection of local cafes, where I work with a cappuccino to hand.). It's essential that I do this typing up quickly.  My handwriting is so appalling that if I leave the notes more tnan a couple of days I can't guess at what some of the scribble means.  I blame the mess on learning shorthand.  It destroyed my handwriting.

Anyway, I type the first draft up on already-used paper.  Psychologically that tells me to see it as a first draft.  It's printed on rubbish paper so that gives me permission to scribble all over the text.

I may hand-edit and reprint the text on rubbish paper a couple more times before I get to the end of the 'first' draft.  Then I'll sit down with the whole text and binge-read it as fast as possible, checking the continuity, flow, and whether I've dealt with all the loose ends.   These 'final' edits are then made to the files, and it's only then that I print the whole novel out on crisp new paper.  We're nearing the end of the process now.

Then I take my stack of pristine pages and I sit down and read the whole novel out loud.  Usually nearly losing my voice in the process.  I then type up the last round of edits and that's it.  One finished novel.  At least for now.

And with the Panthera books they then got published.  The text has been frozen in time in print in the pages of a paperback.  I'm sure there's more I could do to it, but at some stage we need to freeze the frame.  We have to decide that 'this is the best I can do right now', and let our story go.  Then all we can hope is that others like our frozen moment in time.