A Milestone Is Just the Beginning
Writer Paul Anglin recently finished the first draft of his novel, and we invited him to sit down for a little interview to talk about his experience.
Q: OK, Paul, can we have the basics about your project and your book coach?
Paul: My book, The Brightest Shadow, is a contemporary fiction novel I’ve been working on for a year and a half. I worked with book coach Dawn Ius.
Q: How does it feel to have finished?
Paul: It feels great to hit the milestone of having the first draft ‘done’. But of course I’m immediately back into the process of fixing the things I need to get right.
Q: What did you do to celebrate?
Paul: Very little in all honesty. Mainly because I very much see this as draft 0.75. It’s not quite at a stage where I feel like I could give it to someone to read.
Q: What are your next steps?
Paul: Get the next draft finished. The aim is to have a draft that has no consistency issues, where all the cause and effect logic is right and people can read it and see the story. There will still be areas where I need to add more and there may be parts ‘missing’. But this draft will at least make sense and make me feel like I have something.
Q: Why would you recommend coaching to get to a finished draft?
Paul: It gives you a weekly accountability. Knowing I had someone expecting pages every week was a big part of keeping me pushing forward. Plus having that positive encouragement was useful. It made me feel I wasn’t just wasting my time and sending pages out into the ether. It also gave me someone to bounce ideas off and ask questions. You feel like you’re not alone. Which of course is a big deal when you’re writing.
