Having run out of patience with myself last night and stayed up till past midnight to get the last bits done, the third draft of my novel is now winging its way to my agent. Yay!

I hope…

It’s hard to be entirely sure, you see, when these words and worlds and characters you have created have been seeping into every inch of your consciousness as you get deeper and deeper into the manuscript. But I definitely have less reservations about this draft than I did about the others.

I’ve reread the entire thing twice over the past week, each time changing less and less. By last night I was mainly mulling over the effectiveness of a handful of individual words, which is as good a sign as any that it’s time to let it go.

It feels more nerve-wracking this time round. I mean, everyone knows a first draft is meant to be rubbish, right? And with the second one I was experimenting with various things that I knew wouldn’t necessarily work out. But the stakes seem higher now. Which is why my fingers are tightly crossed that this draft reads as well as I think it does.

We shall see.

And in the meantime I have plenty to keep me occupied.

I might even let my mind wander back to that third novel I was getting so excited about before Christmas…

Though I should probably do some laundry first.