As my Facebook friends may have seen from my post there, I finished the rough draft of the third in my trilogy on August 25th. But the rough draft isn’t anything you want to show anybody yet. It just means you got to the place where you wrote “THE END.” And that is a milestone for sure.

I was in Portland at the time, with my kids who live there, and we took an afternoon a couple of days after I completed the rough–a celebration for me–to visit the exquisite Japanese Gardens in Portland. It’s a place of such beauty, such peace and tranquility, we all absorbed the wonder of it, the delicate placement of every tree and shrub, the whisper of rushing water from the many streams, the artistic shrines that speak to you at a level below conscious thought.

Better for me perhaps that the culture behind this beauty was far from the cultures portrayed in my story, so I could set that aside for the day.

But of course I still had work to do on that book. The next stage after the rough draft might be called the “first read.” Every book I write will be full of typos from racing through to get it down as quickly as possible. For me a fast writing is important. When I teach writing I encourage students to choose the method that is quickest for them. Are they fast on the keyboard? Do that. Faster by hand? Do that. I’m a fast typist. But whether typing on a keyboard or writing by hand there’s no way you can get it down as fast as you might speak it, or as the characters might say the words in their dialogue. I write from a comprehensive outline so a lot of it is there for me. But since I went to laptop keyboards–though I love my laptop–I’m not as accurate as I once was. Spell check will only get some of them.

But there’s more. The work has become a living, breathing thing, and ideas don’t stop coming. A new scene here. A new phrase there. So all of that has to be inserted into the manuscript in a way that it still flows.

Now I’m happy to say I completed the first read yesterday. It’s ready to show to beta readers. They’ll all have something that needs fixed or improved somehow. They’ll see more typos I missed on my reading. And ideas will still come. For now it’s quiet. I’m feeling it.

My thoughts go back to the peace and tranquility of Portland’s Japanese Gardens. The koi, like these two, offer reflection in their peaceful pond. I am at peace. Tranquil. My heart is full of the new story and the characters who walk through it.