What I learned from finishing my novel Draft

I've never really did this before but I've actually finished the 1st draft of a novella/Light Novel I've been working on. This Novel has been through over a decade of changes and evolution. The characters are dear to me and the cast has shifted alot too. I have to rethink my title since the original one really doesn't suit the story anymore.

What I learned from this entire ordeal is

1. It won't be perfect.

   Growing up I often heard this advice and just didn't think it applied, it should be perfect. But honestly this thing is a taped, elmer glued mess of a story but I freaking love it.

2. Even if you don't make it as long as you want, its okay.

   I was aiming for 30k words but only managed to squeak past 23k and around 75 pages. I decided to just keep going instead of padding the chapters just to make them longer.

3. Don't keep plot points off just to make it more engaging.

   I would often try to not implement plot points and save them for later only to find there was just nothing else to fill the void. I would think "Ooh this is could but should be saved for later." but then I would just end up adding filler. So yeah if you have a cool idea, implement it right away since you could always rearrange things later.

4. Don't talk about it.

   I suffer alot from talking about story and characters to people and then ended up either dropping them or re-writing them and feeling bad about it. I feel guilty that a character I make a big deal about ,even art of, just goes poof XD Not only that but talking about the plot specifically made me lose motivation to write.

5. Outlines are great but ya gotta write some prose

   Imma be real. I legit outlined the story only to completely toss it out the moment I started writing the story proper. I think my outline process needs work! What happened me more was "Okay I want character to go here" or "I want climax to be this" helped me way more since I think I'm bad with summaries? I don't know.

6. No one is going to do a video essay on your story so you don't need to make it that deep.

   Oh boy this one. I tend to over think and I love to consume video essays and deep dives. I see how essayist will pick apart a story and it's creator to a frightening degree and I was preemptively writing with that in mind. "I don't want anyone to think I'm like this. I don't want anyone to take this away from the story." but then...I have to remember, that I'm a drop in the ocean and no one is gonna freaking do that XD It's freeing knowing just how small fish I am that I can pretty much do whatever nonsense I want cuz noooo body is gonna notice bwahahahahahahahahaha!

7. Writing what I want means doing just that.

   The stuff I want to write is complete nonsense and it's what I reeeeeeeeeeeally want there to be more of. Some may hate it but I live on twitter, everyone hates everything. So Imma do what I want. I also wanted to explore some themes that generally interest me so yeah XD

   
   

   Obviously there is more that I learned but these are the biggest ones. This gives me the motivation to write and draw all the nonsense in my head and get it out there. Even if people think I'm a weird loser, who cares. Cuz I always remember, there are actually terrible people out there that make beautiful art and I'm just a boring person making boring art. And that's okay XD