Writing - Novel 2

Aaaaaand... the first draft is finished! 95,947 words.

I'll do a pass of heavy revision and consistency editing, then it will be time to pass it off to F&F for first comments. It's a great feeling to be through the biggest chunk, though!

Writing - Novel 2

86,736 to 89,027 in about an hour. The big confrontation set up over the second half of the book has begun, and lots of exciting action is taking place. Explosions are soon to come, lots and lots of explosions. Hooray!

edit: ... and up to 95,087 over a couple more hours. That's it! There's a few more paragraphs to tie things up nicely, but the story is done. Phew! Time to start the real editing and backfilling next writing session.

And yes, there were plenty of explosions in the last few dozen pages.

Writing - Novel 2

85,671 to 86,736 this evening in a short 30 minute session. I realized that my protagonist really is going to need a certain skill by the end of the novel, and that he really had the opportunity to practice it during the course of the book... but I didn't have anything about it! So I went back through and poked here and there at the appropriate places... and voila, he can suddenly speak (albeit badly) a new language! Hooray!

Writing - Novel 2

82,298 to 84,373 in about an hour. The aforementioned twist seems to have worked out all right, adding a bit of tension and a good chance for our protagonist to show off some of the things he's learned during his journey. I am having to work a bit to keep red tape and bureaucracy from invading the pages, just based on where the story is right now. It's not exciting and engaging to hear about pages of debate and council meetings, even though it is what would happen in "real life" as it were. Instead, we'll be skipping past that crap and summing it up in a few paragraphs (if that) so we can keep going on to the more interesting bits. Time to get the concluding scenes started!

edit: Up to 85,671 after  another 40 minutes.

Writing - Novel 2

80,674 to 82,298 in about 45 minutes. The story has taken an unexpected twist near the end that I hadn't put into the outline, so I'm unsure how it will work out - but it seems to be going all right so far. If I end up keeping it - and I think I will by this point - I'll have to throw in some foreshadowing early on in the book so that it makes a bit more sense. It does allow our protagonist another way to show some growth over the course of his adventures, though, so I think it will be a good addition overall.

Writing - Novel 2

About an hour and a quarter or so of progress; 78,224 to 80,674.

Revision - Novel 2

Now that my life has settled down from the craziness of the last few months, I'm getting back into this novel and am determined to finish it. I did a full sweep from beginning to end of what's currently written, making minor revisions and wording changes along the way. Now it's time to start writing again and finish the third and final "act" of the novel, which is perhaps 20% done. The heroes of the story are nearing their final challenge, and there are only a few big scenes left before the story reaches its conclusion.

It's always interesting to see how a story evolves as you write it. The outline I originally wrote got progressively more vague as it reached towards the ending of the book, and there are plenty of places where the story was changed from the outline along the way. While you can still recognize the major structure, there are pretty big chunks that got cut out and some new side threads that got added along the way.

After revisions, the current word count is 78,224.