IWSG June - Meeting readers and a new upcoming release!

If you're not familiar with 

the Insecure Writers Support 

Group, check it out here 

and find links to all the other 

participating writers.

 Are we seriously halfway through the year already? It seems like every time I write one of these posts the

 time that has passed seems to have flown by in a blur. At least I'm back out at events. It's been great talking to people in person again. I've done a renaissance faire and two craft shows since my last post and met a lot of readers. And got sunburned, even as I sat there this past weekend on a particularly chilly day shivering after it being nearly 90F the weekend before. Ah Michigan weather.

June brings more book signings. I'll be in Charlotte this weekend, then Holland, White Lake, and finally, Muskegon at the Lakeshore Art Festival. There's also a free virtual book festival going on this month through Pages Promotions. Meet several indie authors every night and get entered to win free books just by attending. I'll be a guest on June 25.

I hope to have another book release date announcement this month. This time, I've co-authored a young YA fantasy novel, Traveling Circus and the Skeleton Key - book 3 of a series. 

And now onward to this month's IWSG question:

For how long do you shelve your first draft, before reading it and re-drafting? Is this dependent on your writing experience and the number of stories/books under your belt?

Currently, now that I've written around fifteen full novels (some of which you'll never see), I only wait a few weeks to a month between rough draft and first edit. Usually I go on a binge reading fest or hit Netflix as way to cleanse my writer brain of what I've just written so that I can review the story with fresh-ish eyes and get to cleaning it up.

That said, I also have books that are still in first draft from when they were written years ago that are waiting for their chance at a re-draft. Most of the time those books are ones that are missing something. That could be a middle or ending, have a major plot issue, or maybe just that spark that drives me to dive back into the story and clean it up with the first edit. I'll get to them eventually.

Overall, I'd say writing lots of books helps refine your process so you churn out a cleaner first draft, know how to productively approach your redraft/first edit, and learn just how much time you need to read that first draft objectively.