Writing Diary #7- Finishing the Second Draft

Previous Writing Diaries will be linked blow this post in case you missed any!

It's been a long time coming but, here I am!!!
The second draft of my novel is finally finished!!!

Current Status:
278 pages
134,600 words (exactly!)

I've been working on the second draft since January and, for some reason, during the last month, I've become an editing machine and have been racing through the final half of my book in lightening speed. All I wanted to do is edit and I got through a good three chapters a day- it was a physical need! 
But, for me, that was great. I've always worried that I wouldn't have the motivation and determination to be a writer- that's always been my main doubt. I'd never considered myself as being a workaholic because I love my free time too much- could never imagine myself staying up late to finish a chapter but now... I am that workaholic- that person that stays up late because they just itch to write. And I'm so unbelievably happy and proud of that. 
Let's hope it continues that way. 
And now the second draft is officially finished! I've been through the entire thing now and... edited it as best as I could, really. There is still a lot of work to do in the future but, at the moment, I've just gone with it.
I've previously had all the chapters in separate word documents but, as I've been editing through them, I've been moving them onto one giant document with my entire story. It's weird because from now on, I won't be looking at singular and smaller chapters; I'll be looking at my book as a whole- a cohesive and fully-fledged book! Which is totally scarier but more exciting than I thought it would be- it all seems more daunting now. From now on, I'll be editing my novel as a whole.
And, boy, is that going to take me forever.
I'm so proud of where I've got to, though. It's further than I ever thought I would get to and it's shown me that I do have the motivation to be a writer- I can call myself a writer. And I'll succeed one day- I know I will.
Because I won't accept anything less.
(Good heavens, that was awfully cliché).
So, from here, I'm going to have one more quick read through it (three day job max) and then I'll print out the entirety of my book. My brother (and first beta reader) will then go through it and make notes on post-it-notes on absolutely everything he can. Hopefully, we can then have a 'meeting' of sorts to discuss through everything and where I need to go from there.
I know I need to get the word count down because, let's face it, this is a monster of a book and the word count is a wee bit high- it got even longer through the edits when I added a ton of stuff.
Oops.  

Thanks for reading! Feel free to comment your thoughts! Stay amazing!

Chloe 

Writing Diary #1 | Writing Diary #2 | Writing Diary #3 | Writing Diary #4 | Writing Diary #5 | 

Writing Diary #6