Recently completed a 750 page fantasy epic. (I'm the author)

Sometime last December, I decided I wanted to write a fantasy epic similar to those I had enjoyed reading for years, and I knew I had a good idea for one already in mind. I did everything I could to avoid thinking too much about it, so I could focus on other projects I already had in a state of completion that just needed finishing.<br><br>Of course, the more I tried to focus on my other projects, the more I found myself wandering away from them and towards this new project. I found myself making notes for this new project as I sat in my office working on my other projects. I began to see similarities between the new project and the projects I was working on, in the same way that you might start to see a word, and then that word is all you can see in anything you read.<br><br>By the time December was over, I had thousands of words of background material, a story treatment, and a draft outline for the first two books in the series. It had to be written. So I hunkered down and wrote a first draft of the first book in the series. It was 360,000 words long, and I knew it had to be shorter. <br><br><br>So I wrote a second draft. It was 340,000 words long. It was still too long. Also, I'd made the mistake of not outlining enough of the story ahead of time before I'd started to write, so I'd added a secondary plot that, in retrospect, didn't help much and made the story worse, rather than better. And it still wasn't right.<br><br>I considered giving up on the project. But I couldn't, because the story had somehow become a part of me and the characters were all I could think about. I'd listen to their voices in my mind when I wasn't in my office. I'd hear their conversations when I was in the shower, or on the toilet, or going for a walk. I still hear their voices. They're the voices of imaginary people, but they're as real to me as my friends. I've found myself thinking about them and what they'd do in a given situation. <br><br><br>I went back over the story and considered it. I still liked the story, I still liked the characters. But I knew I had to make some serious changes if the story was going to be any good. So I cut out the secondary plot and started work on a third draft. But I wasn't satisfied with the quality of the story, and I knew I had to do better. So I took a few weeks to read the great fantasy epics that had inspired me to begin writing in the first place. I thought about what I liked about them, what I didn't like, what had inspired me, what hadn't inspired me. I analyzed the structure of the story. I took notes.<br><br>After that, I went back to the story and reoutlined it. I made some major changes, some of which involved rearranging scenes and some of which involved throwing scenes away and rewriting them. <br><br><br>And then I sat down and wrote a fourth draft. I wrote for ten hours a day, six days a week, for two months straight. It was the most difficult period of time in my life.<br>I do shift work, graveyard shift, so I'd work a double, go home, go to bed, wake up 4 hours later, eat something, and get to work. When it was done, I cried, because I'd finally done something I'd wanted to do for as long as I could remember. <br><br><br>But the draft still wasn't perfect. I'd forgotten a few important details here and there. One of the secondary characters was inconsistent in some places. Another secondary character had a few holes in his backstory. I rewrote a few scenes and rewrote a few lines, made a fifth draft, and then read it over twice more, changing details when I needed to. <br><br><br>And at long last, I finally have a draft I'm happy with. It's 330,000 words long, divided into 760 pages. I'm going to show it to a few of my friends who've graciously agreed to look it over for me, and then after that I'll use some of my savings to get it professionally edited. And I'm excited to see where this journey will take me.