Finished my first draft…now what?

I can’t believe this day has actually come but I’ve finally finished the first draft of my first ever novel.

It’s messy, unrefined and illogical, but there’s a beginning, middle and end in there somewhere…yep, it’s definitely a story, a story that has been bubbling away inside of me for some time. So my next question: now what? Now comes the fun stuff. An editor by trade, I take joy in ripping something apart and putting it together again. I love squeezing bits in, taking bits out, joining up the dots. The pain is the creating – a blank page is every writer’s worst nightmare. Now I have something, or at least, the bones of something, which I can now begin to pick apart with delight, re-wording, re-ordering and re-structuring until I am completely satisfied with the results.

Sure, it may take a while with my penchant for pedantry, but it certainly won’t hurt half as much.

Aaaaand…relax.