Ladies and gentlemen, I am taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming to announce that I have finished the rough draft of my fantasy book!
It’s been months since I started writing this book. Maybe close to a year, I legitimately have no idea. All I know is that I completely restarted the book the first time I hit the 30,000-word mark. But I came back, and I kept going. The finished product is 108,901 words and 34 chapters long. For reference, my longest self-published book is Where I Stand, which is approximately 90,000 words long. Fantasy books do tend to be longer than books in other genres, partially because extra space is needed to explain how the world works.
Is my fantasy WIP the longest thing I’ve ever written? Maybe. When I was ten, I started work on a book that I rarely talk about because of how sheerly horrible it was. I finished the rough draft when I was twelve, and I’d written at least 100,000 words in it. Part of me thinks it might have been longer, more like 120,000, but I have no way of knowing. I don’t have the document anymore.
I had hoped to finish my rough draft by the end of the summer, but I had no idea I’d be able to finish it by the end of June. The reason I was able to accomplish this was because of Write for Life’s Jotting through June challenge, which I think I’ve discussed in previous blog posts. If I haven’t (I’ve written a lot of things recently), it’s basically a writing challenge where you get to pick your own goal and spend the month of June working towards it. I decided that I would try to write 40,000 words this month. Turns out, my book only needed an extra 35,497. The fact that I was able to write over 35,000 words in just 27 days is still impressive, and I’m proud of myself for it. (I went ahead and told the challenge organizers that I hit 40,000. I deserve it.)
All writers, from professional authors to students writing research papers, know that the rough draft is just the beginning. I’m going to take a break from writing for at least a couple of weeks, focusing more on things like reading and crocheting. Then comes the rewriting phase. Different authors have different ways of approaching the second draft of their novel, but I tend to completely rewrite mine. Using either two computer monitors or a split-screen setup, I rewrite every single word from yWriter (the software I use to create my rough drafts) into Microsoft Word. I change things as I go. For instance, I have a character named Loren, and I’ve decided that I want the main character to refer to him as “Uncle Loren” even though Loren isn’t really his uncle.
When the second draft is finished, I might give it another few once-overs before sending it off to my beta readers. For this book, specifically because I’m not used to writing fantasy, I’ve gathered a larger group of beta readers than I normally have. I might even have two rounds of beta reading depending on how much feedback I get.
All that said, I won’t have a lot of interesting writing updates for a while. I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled programming. (I also have a trip to the UK coming up, so when I get back from that, I’ll let you know what it was like!) Do you have any questions about the fantasy book so far? If so, ask me in the comments below and if your question is interesting enough, I’ll write a whole blog post about it! God bless you, dear readers, and dont’ forget to follow us on Twitter!