Back on October 21, 2006, I was watching a movie that inspired the question, "What would happen if a queen had to join a rebellion against her own government to regain her power?" I immediately had a scene pop into my mind of what would start the whole situation. I started writing that night. By November 17, had the first draft of the story done at about 60,000 words. I knew that I needed about 80,000 to 100,000 for a saleable novel, so I was worried by that. Still, this was only the first draft. I purposely hadn't done any revising during first draft because I tend to get myself bogged down if I do.
I went over the story to polish things up and add description ("show, don't tell" that I hadn't taken time to put in the first draft). I also made sure that everything was consistent. I then had four readers look my whole manuscript over. I also had numerous critiques of the first few chapters by a number of aspiring writers. In the end, I did five main revisions of the manuscript. The final draft of the manuscript was finished by May 13, 2007 and now has a 82,800 word count.
My query letter is now written and revised, so now it's time to see how the publishing industry likes my novel!
