After 10 years and multiple false starts on several ideas, I finally finished my first REAL rough draft. Not those, "okay, I'll just write it down and figure it out from here" type drafts that go for 60 pages and lead nowhere but an honest to goodness actual draft of coherency. Course, I hate it. And who doesn't, after that first true thrust into madness?
At 27,000 words, it is much much too short. But that's fine with me. It is, after all, a rough draft. A "I'll just write it down and figure it out from there" draft, but with the added benefit of having an actual story nestled inside of it for once. I've revisited it, given it a once over - deciding that I like most of what is written. All I gotta do now is really delve into the exposition - which I completely ignored the first go around. Factor in a few new characters and a subplot I plan to tinker with and that should easily double my word count in the end.
Onward to the copy/pasta/brainstorming rewrite. 5000 words and counting.