You’ve toiled and sweated over writing your book, you’ve got the allotted amount of words and your plot has worked out well for you.
Now it’s time to go back to the beginning and start again, time to check your spelling, grammar, plot lines and structure. You know that one character will have disappeared from your story with no explanation, or you will have added a character from nowhere. Your second draft will sort out a lot of mistakes. I’d like to tell you that’s enough but it’s not, rereads and drafts go on, and on, and on.
How do you know when you have done enough?
I hate to break it to you but you don’t, there’s no magic number of drafts just a time when you can no longer do it anymore, that’s the time to hand your wonderful work over to someone else to read through and start getting some feedback. First time out give it to someone you trust, someone who will tell you the truth but will be kind. There’s plenty of time to find beta readers who will undoubtedly be harsher, but a kind voice may well root out those little mistakes that you keep missing every time you read your work.
You’re doing really well, so stick with it, take your time and make it as good as you can.
George Orwell
“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
S C Richmond 