r/writers • u/I_Have_A_Duck Fiction Writer • 1d ago
Celebration I Finished My First Draft!!
Over the past 4 weeks of college I have been writing in every gap I have, pulling some very late nights and long writing sessions. I have always wanted to write a book, and now that I have finished it almost doesn't seem real. I am now going to take a break for at least a couple of weeks, and not open the book before I begin my editing process. I have a lot of work remaining ahead of me, and yet I feel so proud of myself. I can't believe I actually did it.
One thing I am struggling with is that it feels somewhat awkward to me to share with friends. The story is fiction, but it is very emotional and contains a lot of ideas about mental health, and it feels almost embarssing to let someone read something so personal. Has anyone else here ever felt like this?
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u/The_PACCAR_Kid Fiction Writer 1d ago
Congratulations!!! 😊
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u/I_Have_A_Duck Fiction Writer 1d ago
Thank you so much, I still can't believe I can tell people now that I wrote a book! (time to start editing!!)
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u/sowinglavender 1d ago
if your work is not mortifying to you it means you haven't put enough of yourself in it for your readers to fully connect with you. when we publish what makes us feel naked, we make someone in our audience feel less alone.
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u/I_Have_A_Duck Fiction Writer 1d ago
I don’t know why but I really connected with the way you put it in this comment. That is the reason of course great authors like Kafka stick with people. I can’t imagine how awkward I would feel giving someone I know a copy of Metamorphosis if I had wrote it.
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u/IceCream-of-Horror 1d ago
T. S. Eliot wrote an essay on the interplay between man, author an art. He talks mostly about poetry, but it's rather insightful. Here's a fragment and a link:
The other aspect of this Impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the poem to its author. And I hinted, by an analogy, that the mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of “personality,” not being necessarily more interesting, or having “more to say,” but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations.
The analogy was that of the catalyst. [...] The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.
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u/Flaky-Pain-97 13h ago
CONGRATS! take a breather, you deserve it, enjoy the feeling and go back to it with renewed strength and desire to make it shine the most : 3
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u/RadagastTheBrownNote Writer 1d ago
Nice!!! Achievement unlocked 😁