First draft of Trimming the Fat is DONE!

This morning, something happened that made me happy and took a huge weight off my shoulders. I've been wrestling over writing the scriptwriting section of my new book. I've struggled with it because I have NO experience with scriptwriting (aside from writing one crappy script), have no expertise on this topic and nothing whatsoever to qualify ME as a person to write about revising your scripts! I considered removing the section altogether but part of me knew it would be a glaring oversight not to include scriptwriting in a book about making revisions!

So I didn't know what to do. That was, until I asked a question at the Absolute Write Water Cooler. Something I needed to know about writing this section. We got a little off-topic there (something that's bound to happen over there, ya know!) and started talking about that same problem I've been struggling with. After some discussion and thought, I've decided to go with what I thought I could do with the chapters on scriptwriting.

Actually, here's the link to that discussion:

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125785

So I was really happy to get that figured out. YAY!! :) It was such a relief. And the extra suggestions on what to include were helpful, too. I added them to my manuscript.

I'm glad I went with keeping the scriptwriting section. I learned quite a bit, in addition to coming across some movie trivia stuff I included.

And something else happened that also made me happy, also took a huge weight off my shoulders. I finished the first draft of the manuscript! WOO-HOO!! So all 52 chapters are written. TRIMMING THE FAT: A Writer's Guide to Making Revisions is 191 pages long and about 60,000 words at first draft. It'll be longer after I add the quotes, interviews, book excerpts, article reprints and blog posts I need to still get for it. That's what I'll be doing for Draft 2, along with some minor tweaking. Then Draft 3 will be a full-blown edit.

YAY! I'm so glad the first draft is done. Took a lot of time, research and focus but it's finally all written up. Interestingly enough, the last chapter I wrote had the title "That's a Wrap." Sweet!