The End!

I have been writing all afternoon and evening, and I have finished Stag in Velvet. Well, I've finished the rough draft--and it is very rough. It's also 138,000 words long!

I'll start the initial revisions tomorrow while they're still fresh in my mind, and hopefully get the bulk of them worked out. I need to do the following, at minimum:

Rewrite the opening, because it all starts with the actions of a character who would not actually act that way.

Trim at least 10,000 words from the first part of the book, because the plot changed so radically since I started it that most of the first part is unnecessary.

Drop in foreshadowing of the murder mystery that ended up being much more important than it was supposed to.

Take out foreshadowing of two subplots that didn't actually come to fruition.

Trim at least 5,000 words from the section of the characters traveling, because it didn't turn out to be as important as I originally intended.

Go back and rewrite scenes where the character I added late in the plot needs to be included.

Either cut the scene that was supposed to be the book's last or work it in earlier.

Change most of the scenes where the main character bursts into tears, because just because I'm sitting here weeping gently while I type doesn't mean it's actually all that agonizing, and the more tears my characters leak, the less impact it has on the reader.