The Finish Line

Update 41 March 14-20, 2022

Well, I finally did it. I typed The END on the current manuscript. We’ve finally done it.

I’m finished!

Mostly. The manuscript might be done, but I still have to look forward to the first round of revision. Fixing the continuity and forgotten plot lines.

But for now, I’ll let the book rest. Give it a month or so.

Last Session, WORDS

So, last week I had to write the final chapter and the epilogue. I totaled 5373 words to finish the week, bringing the novel to a final word count of 192,392.

I had predicted 180-200k for the novel and I kept moving the goal posts in an out every couple months. I will try to cut it down to around 180k after revision, but to be honest I usually end up adding in more than I cut out when I revise. There are a lot of sections of the book that I sped through to try and save time and word count. Plots I didn’t fully explore. Sections that would have been a couple chapters and included fight scenes, that were rendered down to dialogue in a single chapter.

Stuff like that.

Breaking it all down:

So, I started the novel back on the 29^th of April, 2021.

I hadn’t quite finished my outlining nor was a truly ready to start. But I had picked May 1^st as my start date. (I believe I started on the 29^th because it was a weekend off of work).

I sat down and hammered out 30,000 words and felt like things weren’t going right. I was spending too much time split between multiple POVs and the beginning of the book was dragging. I had a reader giving me feedback. I was not pleased.

Therefore, I scraped the novel and started again. I decided to drop whole POVs, I completely cut the prologue for a different one, and I streamlined the beginning of the book to get into the action faster.

Version 2.0

June 14^th saw me start version 2.

Version 2 was mostly revision of the earlier chapters, with only the prologue and four of the original 9 chapters cut. Over the course of the summer, I knocked out a total of 75k and the book was going well. But I was still getting feedback that the stories were very slow to start and too much time was spent swapping between four stories.

This made me sit back and assess my formula for the entire series. I have mentioned this in probably a dozen of these blogs, but I never know what blog will be someone’s first. Therefore, the quick version. Each book has a standalone story, but also there is an arc that happens across all five books. I had two povs in the “main story” and two povs in the “over-arc.” And I was cycling through them.

I quickly realized that if I wanted this book to be under 200k and to flow faster, I need to put more weight on the main story and remove the gimmick of cycling povs.

Version 3

I took two weeks off once I decided to stop writing version 2. I was very down, and it took me a while to realize the weight of the povs. To figure out how I was going to “fix” my narrative.

Spet 9^th to March 17^th saw me revise a bunch of earlier chapters, throw out several chapters, and once again write a whole new prologue. I kept about 20k from version 2, and then wrote a whole new novel until reaching the End.

It has taken a lot longer than I would have liked (but really… novels take time and I can’t compare myself to others). The fact that Stephen King insists that no matter the size each novel should be written in only 90 days is not going to work with me. And yes, he says this in On Writing. 3 months max per book.

I mean if I count my writing days, I might be only 90 days… the only thing is I’m only writing 1-3 days a week while also holding down a job, side job, and dealing with family, doctors, and life in general.

I just counted… version 3 was written over 59 days, though much of the beginning of the book was done over previous iterations of the book. Version 2 18 days, V1 was 14. Damn. 91 days total.

Time Off

Well, what the hell am I going to do with my time off?

First, I plan on playing some video games. It has been a very long time since I just sat back and played a game that wasn’t on my phone. I might pull out something retro… I might play Super Metroid or Persona 3, both for the first time.

As much as I say I’m taking time off and away from the keys. It won’t really happen. I will start the planning and outlining of Book 2 probably later today… even though I have it scheduled later in the month.

I have my birthday coming up in a few weeks and Easter afterwards with my family.

Next week I plan to talk about the outlining. I also have a friend who says that he wants to read my thesis novel and give me feedback on that. I will admit that I don’t have faith in him finishing the book. I get people who offer all the time to read and never finish. But what the hell, I don’t lose anything from letting him get a read of it. And I might get feedback on the first half of the book.

I will figure out something to keep this journal going. To keep you all entertained and to let you keep peeking behind the scenes. Maybe I’ll spend a little more time talking about what I do to waste my writing time. I have been talking about doing more art again, and gaming more often.

Outro

Well, I was starting to write about gaming and TTRPGs and I realize that I might be just writing a bunch of filler that was unnecessary for this post. This post is a celebration for finishing. Next week I can talk outlining and gaming and time wastes.

The weeks after we’ll see what happens.

Thank you all for reading.