Half-way there

To my reader,

     Half of my first manuscript is written.  Only half, I say?  How is this an accomplishment?  Let me explain.

     I gave myself the challenge to write 2000 words a day, in the hope I would actually finish a story.  A month later, I have nearly 30,000 words committed to one such story.  The start to finish is there, but it is only written in one perspective, Walter's.  The book will be written in two.  Now I get to write the whole story again, but from Ellissa's point of view (POV).
     At one point, the book was planned to be written from Ellissa's POV alone, but as I worked further on it, I couldn't tell the complete story without Walter writing detailed letters to her.  And Walter doesn't write letters.  He just doesn't write, or even read.  Therefore, two POVs and the problem was solved.
     Expanding the perspective also gave me more freedom to elaborate on Walter's past and give his side more weight. His and Ellissa's stories are so integrated now, I can't separate them.  That's why it's such a big accomplishment to me to finish Walter's POV.  It's pitted and rough and hardly complete, but it's the their story, start to finish, even if it's one side of it.
     When I finish Ellissa's POV, there will still be much editing to do.  I'll have to organize and structure how the chapters fit together and how they flip from POV to POV.  But right now I'm rejoicing that I have as much as I do.  I've never completed writing a story start to finish.  And now I have.

Off to write my 2000,

Janelle