As of this morning I have completed the first draft (106K words) of Very Truly Run After, the further adventures of Michael Henderson, much to the joy and delight of my first listeners.

Most authors have first readers; I have first listeners, which is to say a couple of folks I read the book too as I go along. I find that reading prose aloud is the best way to make sure it flows smoothly, and it means that I catch fragments and repeated words and the like sooner rather than later.

My first drafts are fairly complete as they stand, since I'm writing by the seat of my pants and since I usually begin a writing session by revising the work of the previous session. But there's still a lot to do. I need to re-read it for consistency, so that I don't change eye-color or given names in mid-stream; I need to clean up typos and peculiar spellings; and I usually end up adding a little color and description to scenes as I go along.

Nevertheless, this is a major milestone—the major milestone, really—and I'm quite pleased.

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photo credit: John Tenniel, public domain.