I recently hit about 130k on the first draft. I’m doing something I haven’t done before with this draft; I’m actually not going to write the last chapter or two at all until I’ve gone back and done the first pass edit. Normally I find the endings change anyway, sometimes in substantial ways, and I need to get a better feel of the various converging threads which I’ve largely forgotten about since I started this draft last year. This means that book 2 will be slightly longer than book 1, as always seems to be the case with these trilogies; probably between five and ten thousand words longer, putting me in that 140k word sweet spot.
My small cohort of beta readers, three close friends whose opinions I trust and value highly, are now in receipt of the very rough first draft. Normally I would do a first-pass myself before letting anybody see it, but now with actual contractual deadlines to meet, I need to expedite the process slightly. This will mean I can do all of my edits together in one fell swoop. This also gives me the opportunity to take some time away from the manuscript entirely, a good 2 to 3 weeks is normally needed to reset my enthusiasm for this particular book, and gives me a chance to spend some creative energy on another post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while.
This first draft promises to be a slightly frustrating reading experience; last year I developed very bad RSI in my forearms after a very intense piece of legal advice which ended up being about ten thousand words written over the space of three days. Consequently my firm bought me Dragon Professional dictation software, which by and large is very good, but does mean that a lot of homophones can slip in. Really the first pass is just for broad plot, thematic and character consistency strokes, but still, it’s not going to be a fun read - so thanks to TJ, George and Will.
That’s all for now, I’m hoping to post a few short book reviews in the next couple of weeks as well.
Adios Amigos
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