La Vie Boheme

Well, I've been thinking about

Well, I've been thinking about The Host all day (surprise, surprise), and already the enormous flaws in the manuscript are leaping out at me. However, rather than itching to dive in and fix it, I'm despairing a little. :P I started thinking about the whole process though, and I realized there are a lot of things I learned.

Things I learned writing The Host:

1. I really can write a story long enough to fill a novel!
   
2. There's something exhilarating about writing at a breakneck pace and a devil-may-care attitude.
   
3. An outline might not be such a bad thing next time. I had to outline everything for Tribe 8, and the writing and editing went very smooth for the most part.
   
4. Writing really is something I enjoy doing.
   
5. Stealing from one's own real life is not only acceptable, it's downright necessary sometimes.
   
6. Anything can be used as inspiration.

I'm sure I'll add more later as they occur to me...

I FINISHED THE HOST!! Ahem.

I FINISHED THE HOST!!

Ahem. Sorry to scream, but I have a feeling my coworkers would frown on me screaming for real around here. I finished the final, confrontational scene last night at Write Club, figuring I had about 1,000-2,000 words left to go to wrap everything up. Then when I was writing this morning, it all came to me and everything was wrapped in a single scene. It might be a little rushed, my endings usually are. I see the ending getting close and I start galloping like a race horse, but I don't care! That's what edits are for, right?

I am an honest-to-goodness novelist, by god! Now it goes in the hypothetical trunk until at least June. At least.

Final word count on the first draft: 64,987.