30 May 2018: Thirty-nine Thousand Words

There's something about writing out the words for a nice big number like 39,000, that is remarkably satisfying. "Thirty-nine thousand words". So much cooler than 39k, or even 39,000, where all you see is a handful of digits with an optional comma thrown in.

Thirty-nine thousand. Yeah, I like it.

Hmmmm... one hundred fifty thousand. That's even better. I look forward to writing it out for real. And for reference, The Hand of Tyr is one hundred sixty-eight thousand words, so I am targeting about the same size for book two. Once I've gone through the re-writing and revisions, I expect it to grow, just like the first book did.

Progress Report - Sunday May 20, 2018

I'm still tying up a few loose ends on the current scene and chapter, but I did surpass 31,000 words (almost 32,000) today. For the week, that means I wrote well over 8,000 words starting last Monday and going through today, Sunday. That also means I surpassed my stretch goal of 1,100 words per day, on average. I did skip Friday completely, and did not hit my stretch goal on Saturday. But I made it up both earlier in the week as well as today.

Overall, I feel pretty good about that!

How Did Sunday End?

I finished up Sunday having written 2,000 words. That's nowhere near a record for me (I've written over 10,000 words in a day, on rare occasions), but a good day nonetheless.

Total word count for the book is currently just over 23,000 words. Ending target is 150,000, so I'm almost 1/6 complete.

Now I'm ready to start this week!

Progress Report, and One More Thing

As of today, the morning of Sunday May 13, 2018, I've written 6,629 words in the past eight days. Pretty good progress. My normal daily quota is 556 words. That's enough to hit my 150k word target by year-end. My stretch goal is to double that quota on a weekly basis, so instead of writing 3,892 words per week, I would write 7,784. I haven't quite hit the stretch goal this week, but it's only Sunday morning. I may very well do another writing sprint this afternoon or evening, and hit that target.

I don't have a stretch goal of writing 300k words for this novel, but rather would simply like to finish the draft early. If I hit my stretch goal, I would be done with the draft by October, meaning I should be able to publish this book sooner than planned. So it's a win for everyone!

On another topic, some people may be wondering if or when I'm going to start posting samples of the next book. Unfortunately I'm not in a position where I can do that at this time. I'm evaluating whether I might want to publish the book using Amazon's Kindle Select program. There appear to be some nice benefits to it, but it comes with the restriction of not being able to publish my book on any other platform. I'm not a big fan of vendor lock-in like this, but the benefits may end up outweighing the costs.

Anyway I am still evaluating this, so I may end up changing my mind. Until I've made a final decision though, I need to keep my manuscript unpublished, even in draft form.

Having said all that, I have some other story-related content such as maps and other notes, that I can still post here without any risks to the publishing of my book, so you can expect to see those start appearing in the near future. Starting with my new map of Nûmidëa and the West!

Over 3000 words this week, and it's only Friday!

Yeah, I finally got off my ... seat ... and got back to seriously writing every day. I recalculated my daily word-count quota so that I will still be on track to finish the first draft by year-end. And the daily number is still an easy target, so basically I'm surpassing that quota every day.

Not much else to say here, except that it's good to be back in the saddle again.