A commission of Arkaya working on her spaceship by Zet, one of my friends on Twitter.
Two days ago, I finished draft 3 of Arkaya! It came in at 131,016 words over 53 scenes, and it took me about four months to get through this draft.
This is one of my longest-lived original stories. Arkaya, my alien MC, first appeared during my college days. This story was my 2011 NaNoWriMo project (NaNoWriMo, for those unfamiliar, is National Novel Writing Month, where the aim is to write 50,000 words in a month), and I spent six months in 2014 completing the first and second drafts. Since then, I've set this story aside to work on other things... but I recently picked it back up.
At its heart, Arkaya's story still speaks to me. With the help of her human boyfriend, heir to a large spacecraft company, and her elder sister, who is still upset that Arkaya left home four years ago, she is fighting to protect the guardian spirits of her people from being stolen away. It deals with magic (in the form of alien mind-powers, and the mystical bond between the alien soul and their past lives), and a secret that everyone is willing to kill for.
Yesterday and today I was feeling that cluster of emotions I've affectionately termed the "Post Draft Slump". Whenever I finish a draft or a story, I feel weird and uncomfortable for a few days. But now, I'm jumping right into Draft 4. Draft 4 has a semi-arbitrary deadline - I want to get it done by December 17th, to send in for the full-manuscript critique I won in the Ink and Insights competition. (I'll also be sending it out to my incredibly supportive beta readers... and reading it aloud to my husband for his commentary.) I'm nervous and excited to get it "done", although part of me doesn't think I can actually complete it in one month and a few days.
But as I prepared Draft 3 for a print-out, I noticed a lot of encouraging things. I feel like I've gotten better at this whole writing thing. (Which is both awesome and terrifying!) The story is taking shape, and the characters are becoming more themselves. I am also starting to see the ways I can improve the next draft. I'm going to start a master list of problems, and check them off one by one over the next month.
Maybe Draft 4 will be something I can feel proud of, when it's done. I know I'll be proud of all the work I've put into it.
If nothing else, I've given my four-legged writing companion Cali something new to sit on. She's been hanging out with me a lot today as I started to read through the draft... hopefully she approves! :)