Draft One Done!

Draft one of my book is finished!! Woohoo! (Above see the many faces of my joy at being done.) When I started my unofficial Nanorimo three months ago, I had about 20k words of this story written. The finished draft, which I completed today, clocked in at 95k (303 double-spaced Word pages if you’re not familiar with word counts). That’s too long for a YA romance, but hey, that’s what editing’s for. I’d rather overwrite and cut down than underwrite and not have enough material to work with.

This book is far from done—I have 5 pages of revision notes to get me started editing—but I’m really excited to have gotten through a whole draft in this short of a time. This is the second full book I’ve written, and the first one took me years (and three attempts where I got halfway through the story, realized it wasn’t working, and started over), so to know that I can do a full draft in a matter of months feels great. I think the faster turnaround time is partly due to increased experience and partly to Jessica Brody’s Save The Cat! book/plotting method. For all the writers out there, I highly recommend it. It’s so great! It’s all about helping you understand the structure of a story plot and the “beats” that should occur at different points of a story. I won’t get into the details because if you’re interested, you should just read the book. ;)

Anyway, with the rough draft done, I’m going to give myself the weekend off and then move on to editing!

My new story is tentatively titled CARS, THE FRIEND ZONE, AND OTHER TIGHT PLACES.

Short description (Subject to heavy revision)

Tiff planned this whole road trip around getting out of the friendzone she never meant to end up in with Rob. But she didn’t count on having to compete with her flirtatious cousin Rhiannon, who ends up on their trip too. And she didn’t count on Rob having a secret of his own, one that threatens the success of her strategy. When her attempts to get together with Rob backfire, she has to decide whether she’s rather hide behind her plans or stand up and take a chance without knowing the outcome.

Excerpt from Chapter 1 (Also subject to heavy revision)

Harriet brightens. “I remember you!” Her smile shifts into a frown as I tow her to the side of the pool, and she pokes my shoulder. “You never come over anymore.”

“I know.” My chest contracts, but I make a frowny face at her. “Weird, huh?”

“Why don’t you come?”

A shadow falls over the two of us, and I look up. My stomach flipflops. Too bad Harriet’s too young to appreciate irony, because the answer to her question just arrived.

Rob smiles down at his sister, dimples deepening his cheeks. He and Harriet share their blonde hair, inherited from their mother, but while Harriet got their mother’s milk-white skin too, Rob got their half-Indian father’s tan. Despite his height—at 5’6”, he’s just three inches taller than me—his looks had girls sighing after him through high school.

But not me, because we were just friends. And I was fine with that.

Was being the operative word.