I never thought I'd say this, but I've come to the point where I think I have written most of the first draft of my book.
Some days I love it: I read it and re-read it in delight, and think to myself I've written just about the best book in the world, and start spending in my mind the millions I'm bound to collect when it finally gets published. Other days (especially when I've been reading say Doris Lessing or Steinbeck, or what's the name of this guy who wrote Lolita), I think my book is absolutely crap, and I'm tempted to delete it off my computer and take another postgraduate course with the Open University (this is my existential equivalent of comfort eating, though sometimes I do actual comfort eating too, if I'm feeling particularly bad).
Anyway, early on in the process of writing the novel I decided to ignore the inner voices, whether they come to congratulate me on future Nobel prizes for literature or to rubbish my work, and I just keep writing regardless (Okay, I admit it, so sometimes I indulge a little in the fantasies of the Nobel Prize, but only a tiny, tiny little bit).

I realise now that a first draft, hard work as it is, is only a fraction of the work. Then comes the re-writing. And the re-ordering. I have about seven or eight versions of the book in my computer, organised by story line, colour coded by theme, colour coded by chapter. It's a mess, really. A stream of consciousness. A bunch of tangled up ideas trying to find their place in my invented universe, and come together at last. And tidying up has never been my thing. Ask anybody who knows me.