So It Begins...

The story is underway

Photo by Camille Orgel on Unsplash

November has run its course. 30 days have passed by, and with them, 60,000 words. I challenged myself to write 50,000 in the month, and managed to surpass that goal by a full 10k. Not bad, if I do say so myself, though the repeated twitching of my left eyelid suggests I would do well to consider spending a few more hours in bed and a few less typing away at my keyboard.

Sleep deprivation aside, I’m quite happy with the progress that I’ve made. The story has begun to take shape according to the outline, character arcs are flowing… well, maybe not nicely or smoothly, but they are moving, and I have a solid idea of where to go next in any given scene.

However, there are quite a few of those still to come. The typical fantasy novel, you will hear, has a word count between 100k and 150k words. I will almost certainly surpass that upper limit, probably hitting 200k before the story is finished. Perhaps the several rounds of revisions will cut down the word count, but it’s also quite possible they add to it. I’m okay with that. I think. This story will be as long as it needs to be.

So, where do we go from here?

Easy. I keep writing. I have a vague goal of 100,000 words by the end of the year, and writing 40,000 in a month is certainly possible (I just proved that), but I also want to make time for other pursuits, all of which feel by the wayside during my mad blitz in November. Still, I think it’s possible, even if I also want to knock out a couple of YouTube videos and finish playing Cyberpunk 2077.

As for the rest of the book, well, I plan to finish it by the end of March. And by finish, I mean finish the first draft. Goodness knows this will take some serious revising. I already know I have a lot of reworking to do for certain characters and scenes. But, all of that can wait until the ending has been written. If I do reach 100,000 words by the end of December, that basically means I have 3 months to write another 100,000 or so. Easy-peasy. From there, I’ll probably take a few months off before turning my eyes toward revising. I’ll almost certainly spend those months world-building the other novel I intend to write, set in an entirely different universe. Fantasy in space, anyone?

Anyhow, that’s where things sit. I will see you next Monday with a new post talking about world-building!