I can feel it: during the last sessions, I’m building towards the end of the novel. Uncharacteristically for me, I have laid out the last few chapters and I know roughly what happens in every one of them. That doesn’t mean that I’ve outlined them, but only that the ending is pretty clear to me.

So, as the sculptor removing the extra chips of stone covering the statue, I now only have to write down the last few lines.

Yesterday, I wrote my usual half chapter, picturing preparations on the villain’s side. In the next, I’ll show preparations on the heroes’ side. That should take me to Sunday evening. After that, it will be the finale, which I expect to be two chapters long and the epilogue. Depending on each chapter’s length, I’m looking at having a complete first draft at the end of next week or by the 20th of April at most. The overall length should be as predicted around 120k-words, leaving me some meat to cut off during rewrites. Yes, alpha reader, I’ll cut away the dull cryptographic stuff!

All of that to say that rewrites are coming – the spectre of rewriting circles over my head, like a vulture. I don’t know why, but I don’t believe I’ll like rewrites very much. As Howard Taylor says: “Cut stuff away? That’s work you’re asking me to throw away here!” There also the nagging feeling that I won’t be able to part with some passages, that I won’t be able to kill my darlings. I know that first novel is probably just one big darling I’ll have to axe anyway, but that doesn’t make it easy to do.

Stephen King says that you should lay the first draft to rest for a few months and work on something else to be able to be more critical when you pick up that first draft to do rewrites. He’s probably right in that, but I feel a little pressed for time here, as I don’t believe that I can write a new novel and do rewrites on the preceding one at the same time. I write about an hour – an hour and a half each day. I don’t have the time to do rewrites AND write at the same time. Believe me, I’ve tried re-reading and correcting before each session and I’ve abandoned that. It takes too much time and now, I just jump in and write. Only when I don’t feel like beginning to write, do I correct spelling and re-read, to put me into the mood.

So, I have a choice between

* writing a new novel and finish it, do rewrites on the first, write new novel, do rewrites on the second, and so on

* doing now the rewrites on the current novel and outline the next one.

I believe I’ll try the second one first. I can always come back to option number 1 if things don’t work out.  Of course, my entire schedule here is dependent on alpha reader who has like half a book to read before I tackle with rewrites.

Maybe I’ll have time to write an entire book before I get the feedback on the first, who knows 🙂