When it's been edited along the way, over the past four years, locked down in a third floor flat during a pandemic with a view of treetops, and subsequently workshopped and torn apart and reconstructed during MA seminars and a week long Arvon course, and with writer-ly friends, and shared with my target audience ie other Maladaptive Daydreamers for feedback, and then scoured for themes and foreshadowing and nitpicky errors during hot sweaty nights after work.
I mean, it is STILL technically a First Draft.
But boy, she's almost watertight.
If I were giving advice to anyone but myself, I'd be saying this is STILL a First Draft.
Because?
1. You don't have the distance from the text that you need for rigorous copy-editing.
2. If you had it published tomorrow, are you SURE you wouldn't want to change a thing?
3. It isn't a Final Draft until cold hard professionals have had their hands on it, and she still sails.
Sigh.
Okay, so maybe I can call it a First Draft (Revised with buoyancy aids).
It's painful, and I am impatient, but I'm off for another tack around the bay....
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