Today (the day that I’m writing this, not the day this publishes) is a special day. I’ve reached a major milestone in this book and it’s exhilarating.
100,000 words.
This is the longest continuous thing I’ve written (I actually passed that particular milestone about 15,000 words ago, but let me have this). I will finish this book within another 20,000 words, meaning that by the end of June or July, I’ll have a completed draft. And it’ll be a fairly solid draft at that.
Yes, there are major developmental fixes to make like how I changed the way one magic system works about halfway through. I also have a much clearer idea now about certain character motivations and the general level of awareness that people have of other worlds than I did at the beginning of this book. From the big stuff to the sentence-level stuff, there is a lot to revise. I’m trying to figure out now what my editorial passes will be. Generally, it’s gonna be the big stuff first, the sentence-level stuff last, but I’ll need to see if I work better focusing on one thing at a time and doing more passes or if I should do fewer passes looking at multiple things.
I’m grateful for my day job experience in editorial work for educational content development because the process of revisions isn’t intimidating to me. It’s just a matter of figuring out how I want to approach each pass.
I’m also grateful for my background in erasure poetry since that, in a way, is much like revising and editing. Revisions give me the chance to make the book really shine.
Once I get the MS to a place where I feel totally good about it, I’ll be rounding up beta readers and will certainly be doing more revisions. After that…querying agents.
It’s exciting how a little bit every day eventually leads to these milestones. Of course, my mind is already gearing up for the next project, which will be draft 2 of a novella. I’ll be balancing that draft with revisions on this book.
You can see I’m still struggling to consistently hit 500 words a day. I’m hoping that the first half of June will be super productive given my motivation to finish because I’ll be traveling that last week and unable to work on the book.
Should I be wild and make the day before I leave the deadline to finish? Maybe. That’s either a brilliant plan or a way of setting myself up for defeat.
Anyway, what do I like about what I’ve written since the last update? Well, my MC is starting to have a through line of confidence, even on her worst days. She’s just a little bit more ready to take ownership and that drive is carrying her through the last part of this book.
My next update should hopefully be a “omg I finished my book” post.
Until next time!