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The Small Steps It Takes To Finish Your Novel After The First Draft

Ready for the next step?

Elise L. Blake
4 min readFeb 22, 2024
Photo by Anton Shuvalov on Unsplash

Congratulations on finishing your first draft! You’ve made it further than over 50% of writers who attempt to write a novel!

But the work isn’t done yet, and some say that the real work has only just begun.

So now that you’ve finished off that first draft — what do you do now?

Take A Break

You deserve a break after all the hard work you’ve done, but taking a break actually means more than that.

Before you jump headfirst into the revision process you need to put space between you and that first draft before you start editing it so that you can come back to it with fresh eyes.

Before you begin the revision process keep your eyes off of your completed draft for a minimum of two weeks, or even better, lock it away in a draw and set a calendar reminder for a few months from now.

Use the time in between to start another project or return yourself to life outside of your writing desk.

This way you’ll allow your mind to completely forget that first draft until that reminder goes off and you’ll be able to evaluate it as something brand new to you and allow you to be more objective in the…

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Elise L. Blake
Elise L. Blake

Written by Elise L. Blake

Full-time writing coach and novelist. Elise is a recent college graduate where she earned her BA in Creative Writing.

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