Today was a great day! I reached an important milestone in my Write Club journey and completed the first draft of the first of 8 stories I will write during the 16 weeks. I realize it may not sound like an enormous achievement, but this is one of my longer stories. 

For a little perspective, my typical stories for Steemit are about 750-1,500 words. That's 1-2 pages of writing. (For some examples, see the list of my Steemit short stories on my [intro post](https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@jayna/re-introducing-myself).) The requirement for Write Club stories is 1,500 to 7,000, which means the range is from about 2 pages to about 14 pages. My first story is over 6,000 words - about 13 pages. But it's fun and readable, I think!

![sparkler-677774_960_720.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTVvEDuwyCYBphX5mR6t3P9hykaPzbh9oqso7kDZzHtrW/sparkler-677774_960_720.jpg)
Image credit: Pixabay

<H2>What's next?</H2>
Well, when I say drafted, that means that the basic story is in place. It has a beginning, a middle, an end, and a storyline with hopefully interesting, complex characters. Now I'm letting it rest for a bit until tomorrow, when I will look at it with hopefully fresh eyes and begin the editing process. I expect that to take a good chunk of hours tomorrow (thank goodness it's the weekend), followed by a rest and another edit on Monday. 

And then the peer editing cycle begins. The 8 of us will read each other's stories, and there's an editing process where everyone's story will be critiqued by at least a few other writers. 

I know what you're thinking. Why does writing and editing a story take so long? Well, it depends on a number of factors, including the length and complexity of the story. And in my case, I have to work my writing around my full-time job and other commitments. But in general, if you have a fairly lengthy and complex story (which I do), and if you want it to be polished enough to submit to literary magazines at the end of it all (which I do), the process of writing, editing, and polishing a story can be very involved indeed!

Thanks for reading. If you want to know more about Write Club, click the #writeclub tag.

*If you are a writer seeking community and support, you can find editors to help you at [The Writers’ Block on Discord](www.mspfictionworkshop.com/how-to-join-the-workshop/).*

![jayna_gifsignature.gif](https://steemitimages.com/DQmSVPbDRv41CDdBmTYUDSg7MiFLkufrZTFPNQFsL854TvA/jayna_gifsignature.gif)