After 5 months spent writing, my first draft is completed. I had allotted 6 months to write 100k words, and ended up writing 130, with one month left from the original schedule.

I even took some time yesterday to draw 2 maps (continent + city) to support the story.

I know that in the remote case where this book should be published, the editor wouldn’t want me to bring in the maps, but would use a professional artist to do them, so those maps are completely useless. At least, I can use them if I want to tighten the prose during rewrites : I should be able to see things from the maps I never saw while doing the first draft and hopefully correct some errors.

The entire manuscript is being printed as I write this and  the 437 pages are ready to ship to alpha reader who has now a lot of reading/commenting to do.

What to do now? If I don’t write, my evenings will start to look boring to me.

Options are :

* Start outlining my next novel (Yes, I do have some ideas for the next novel, not in the same setting, thank you)

* Start editing the last manuscript

* Do both, as I don’t imagine outlining to take up that much time anyway.

I’ll probably do only outlining until after my trip to London next week, so my brain has some time off.

But remember this : first draft is done. Yeah me!