Ah, progress.

I reached a milestone this week when I finished a decent draft of the first two parts of the Camilla manuscript.

It weighed in at 142 pages and 40,000 words.

Now six copies are in the hands of trusted writer friends. They’ll get comments back to me in mid-August.

I love this part of the process. I remember distinctly when I did this for my memoir. The comments I received really helped shape the work. I look forward to the same this time around.

It’s definitely a mind-shift, knowing that other people are reading it. I’ve worked on it for so long, with my writing group reading short excerpts here and there. This is the first time anyone is seeing anything whole.

As the writers are reading the first 40,000 words, I’ll be revising Part III. I anticipate Part III is another 20,000-25,000 words. When they get comments back to me in August, I should be ready to hand off Part III for them to read.