The 6th draft is now history. The target date was September 1st. Hmm. One and thirteen are close, right? Anyway, what’s 12 days amongst friends? Here’s a breakdown that compares the 5th and 6th drafts, chock full of meaningless statistics.

Length
Draft 5 – 54,000 words
Draft 6 – 80,000 words

Writing Period
Draft 5 – November 2003 – January 2004
Draft 6 – May 2004 – September 2004

Perspective
Draft 5 – 1st person
Draft 6 – 3rd person omniscient

So, is the book done? Tragically no, but it is good enough to hand off to a neutral 3rd party to beat up for a few weeks. Now is the time to take the manuscript down to the woodshed and show it who’s in charge. Meanwhile, if an agent calls my bluff and wants to see the first 3 chapters, I can send them out without any fear of embarrassing myself.

What’s next? Remember that query business? That starts again. I’ll do a quick polish on the synopsis as well. Then there’s the matter of the second book.

The process never ends. And that’s a good thing.