I'm going through a quick edit of my now-completed first draft, and I'm having a few revelations.
The main revelation is this: "Man, I don't remember writing some of this stuff."
Sure, it was a couple of months ago when I wrote some of this, but I couldn't believe how different some of my writing is. I've cleaned a few things up and changed some things to make it sound more like the other stuff I wrote, but still.
This isn't the main edit, I'll be doing that probably at the end of November. But reading through this once - from the beginning - before I lock it up in a drawer really shows me how far my main character moved along through the book. And that makes me happy.
I'm sure I'll change some stuff around and add words and hack words out, but getting this first glimpse of the thing as a whole is pretty neat for me. And refreshing, too.
I have that issue ALL the time! It's been almost 2 years since I began my novel, and after I get a chapter to the point where I can move forward, I never go back until I'm all the way done the entire thing (still hasn't happened yet). But occasionally, I have to open an old chapter to check for details/consistency, and I'm like "wow I wrote that?" Yeah.
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