3 Reasons You Need to Celebrate Your First Draft
Writing a novel can be a long process that takes an incredible amount of energy, motivation, and time. It can sometimes feel like reaching the final “the end” will never get here, that we’ll be stuck in revision mode forever.
Because of this, it can feel a little anticlimactic to celebrate reaching the end of a first draft. If we know anything about the writing process, we know there’s a mountain of work still ahead of us. But finishing a first draft is a huge accomplishment, and no matter what still awaits us, it’s so important to take a moment and celebrate.
By celebrate, I don’t mean you necessarily need to jump on a plane and go off on a weeklong vacation (although you certainly could). Your celebration can be as small or big as you want or feel comfortable with, but whether you drink champagne from the top of the Eiffel Tower or do a little happy dance with apple juice in your kitchen with your toddler, I encourage you to find a way to celebrate this incredible milestone, and here is why you should:
1. Remind Yourself This is a Huge Accomplishment
Do you know how many people say they want to write a novel but never do? I don’t have exact numbers, but I know that number is pretty big. Writing a book is a bucket list item for so many people, something they hope they might do someday. But only a percentage of those people ever actually put pen to paper and begin writing their story. And an even smaller percentage actually finish that story.
I have to remind myself often that while it might seem to me that everyone and their mother have written and published books, that’s just my perception based on the fact that I work with writers daily and my social media is overrun by writers between the Facebook groups I’m in and the fact that I almost exclusively follow writers and authors on Instagram. In reality, the percentage of people in the world who have actually written and published books is much smaller than my social media feed implies. If you’ve completed a first draft, you’ve accomplished something many dream of doing but never actually achieve. And that is worthy of celebration and enthusiasm!
2. Allow Yourself a Mental Breather
Writing a novel is mentally demanding. Not only do you need to create a plot, characters, and setting and find the right words to convey all of that to your readers, you’re also likely battling that little voice in the back of your mind the entire time telling you that you can’t do this. Writing a novel is challenging on several fronts, and it’s just as much a mental battle as anything else.
Pausing to celebrate the completion of your first draft gives your brain the break it needs and deserves. It’s been working in overdrive for weeks, months, maybe even years to reach the end of this draft. And while there may be a good amount of work still ahead, your brain deserves a little mental breather to relish in its achievement before jumping back into the land of revision.
3. Your Story Is On Paper!
Once your first draft is completed, your story is finally down on paper (or on your computer screen). It’s no longer just in your own head but written down so that someone else could actually read it. And that’s pretty cool!
While there’s still revision and edits ahead and your story will surely get better from here, the fact that it’s finally a physical manuscript rather than just some ideas in your own mind is absolutely cause for celebration. After all, it’s said that you can’t edit a blank page, so now that you have an actual manuscript in hand you can edit, you’re one step closer to having a full, polished story!
I’d love to hear from you! How do you celebrate completing a first draft, or how do you plan to when you get there?
