It didn't need a rest so I sent it out into the world...

Just finished reading 'The Complaints' and no this is not a book/article about (insert your industry here). Its a very smart, well written, police procedural by Ian Rankin. I enjoyed it. One perk of feeling rotten is having the excuse to put my feet up and read way more pages than I might normally manage. Downside is I don't feel like writing anything of my own and I have a university deadline looming for assignment one. Ack... I guess I also don't feel particularly creative because I've just finished a junior novel and my brain always goes on holiday after writing The End.

Now I made sweeping statements the other day in several forums about not letting my MS rest before sending it off to a publisher and I thought I'd better qualify that before folk get the wrong idea. I think letting your MS rest on completion of the first draft can be incredibly useful. This particular MS is an old one I have been reworking. It has rested for several years before I cast my eyes back over it. Letting it rest again would have been overkill. Sure it has undergone a lot of change but the fundamental story is the same so it did not need any more ripening. Also, my general style of working is to redraft and redraft as I go, so reaching the end for the first time is not the same as it would be for someone who goes hell for leather start to finish. Redrafting as I go means by the time I reach the end of my story I might have already been over it 15 times plus. My first draft therefore is not the same as some other writer's first draft. The months it takes me to write through to the end, have elements of letting the story lie within them. That first draft can take longer but then I don't have that mandatory 'sitting' period at the end. Do what works best for you. I am also congenitaly impatient and a three month wait at the end would do my head in. I'm crazy enough without exacerbating the problem...