Writerly Vacation Ends With Sparkles

When I started my vacation three weeks ago, I had a few writing-related objectives on my list. The biggest one was definitely to finish the first draft of The One Who Sees, which incidentally would make it my first completed first draft. What started out as a reasonable task (writing 20k words over three weeks) soon doubled in size (because I threw away a story arc and the 20k words written for it).
It took me a while to come to term with the huge edit I did. Some things were missing for the new story arcs and figuring them out implied that I had to stop whining about what I cut. In a nutshell, I entered my last three days of vacation with about 25,000 words left to write.
Amidst the errands and the preparation for the big “going back to work” day, I spend an awful lot of time in front of my computer, hell-bent on completing Lily’s adventure. After much tea and tears, I am proud to announce that I did it (hence the sparkles!)

At 93,868 words, The One Who Sees has officially seen the end of its first draft. The second half of the manuscript has already been edited a fair amount of time (due to me abandoning the project for a while and editing to get back in the swing of things) so I’ll concentrate my editing efforts on the second half (which, admittedly, needs a lot of work). I expect the final manuscript to be about 100k words long because, contrary to most writers I chat with, my first draft is really straight to the point and missing some important bits of description. So in the end, tightening up the action shortens it but fleshing out the setting lengthens it a bit more.
In my wildest dreams, I would be sending my baby out to for a first round of beta readers by October 15th. Will I make it and jump around in another shower of sparkles? I’ll be sure to let you know. 😉