Writing First Drafts is always exciting and tense
Exciting because it is fresh unchartered waters and although I have a basic plot outline and character sketches I'm still not sure where the tide will take me and which shore my novel will wash up on. It is tense too because I am in a hurry to write it as fast as I can while my head is full of ideas. I try to resist editing too much as I write the first draft because editing slows down the creative process and it is very easy to get hooked on editing and therefore postpone finishing the novel. However, because I research as I go along and the characters and plot grow, some editing is inevitable. I resist the temptation though to revise every paragraph, sentence and word, that can come later. The aim is to write the first draft as quickly as possible. So a good rule, which I therefore try to follow (although not always successfully) is to begin each day from the last sentence I wrote the preceding day. So far I am up to chapter fou...