Where I am now

Thanksgiving is over, so I now I have a few precious hours to write. First, a blog entry (as this is new and exciting), then some writing on the story. I made good progress yesterday, tackling the problem of too many characters and too many story arcs (by eliminating several from the middle).

Today’s topic: Where I am now
As of this moment, I am about 1/2 way done writing the rough draft of the book. I hit this point a bit ahead of schedule and have spent the last couple weeks reviewing and revising what I have written to incorporate some feedback and make sure it lines up with what is planned for the second half.

No one will read this rough draft, but I will quickly work it into a 1st draft which my first readers and local critique group will read. These folks have already given me feedback on the first four chapters and I have revised those to a 2nd draft. Before shopping it around, the whole thing will probably hit a 3rd draft, maybe a 4th if readers find any major problems.

Here are the vital statistics:

• Rough Draft 27587 words


• 1st Draft 22618 words


• 2nd Draft 15314 words


• Total: 65519 words

And some stats on the support files:

• Outline: 16862 words


• Brainstorming: 19615 words

This is great, except that I’m trying to keep it under 85K words, so I have some cutting and compressing to do.

I thought tidbits on the book might be entertaining, so here is one for this entry:

Tidbit on the story
I just reworked the outline for the middle 2 sections of the book, removing a whole story arc to get the word count down. Now, instead of going to work for Mr. Sham (which could be a book in itself), Mr. Sham is going to kidnap Molly and the girls will have to find a way to get in and rescue her. This is shorter, a bit more exciting and we still get to see what goes on in Mr. Sham’s place.