Publication day again!

A bittersweet moment for me, as this is not only the final volume in my second trilogy but also the last story set in a world, and featuring characters, I've been working with for almost 12 years.

Part of me is glad it's done, and looking forward to new projects. And part is sad to say goodbye to a cast of characters I've come to know so well.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DB8GL9Y3

#writersOfMastodon #bookstodon #SffWriter #writersLife #fantasy #sff #writingCommunity

KWL – 344 – Committing to Your Writing Practice with Jessie Kwak https://kobowritinglife.com/2024/05/28/kwl-344-committing-to-your-writing-practice-with-jessie-kwak/ #indieauthorconference #authorconference #publishingadvice #KoboWritingLife #self-publishing #writingadvice #KWLCommunity #ghostwriting #sci-fiauthor #indieauthor #KWLPodcast #sffwriter #podcast #writing #sci-fi #writer #Kobo #tips #KWL

I've not posted an update since before we went off to the Lake District for the second week of April. Progress has been severely hampered since then by, among other things, taking 17 days out to watch the World Snooker Championship (pretty much the only sporting event we get involved with in our house).

That's all done now, as of yesterday, so I got back to the draft in earnest today and clocked up almost 3,000 words, reaching the end of Chapter 16 (of 21) and rapidly closing in on 80% complete for this first draft.

I'd already pushed my target end-date back on our return from the Lakes (from end April to mid May) but I forgot to factor in the snooker, so now my tracking spreadsheet is saying I need to achieve another 3,000 words EVERY DAY for the next 8 days if I'm to hit that target.

Unlikely.

But I'm pretty sure I can do better than the spreadsheet's prediction of the actual end date (May 31st) and indeed I have to do better, because building work starts here during the last week of May and it's gonna be utter chaos for three or four months. I really don't want the draft to be affected by all that. Sporadic writing time is fine for editing, but for "the actual writing" I need more focus and near-zero distractions. We'll see.

Current predicted final word count: 108,000.

#writing #fantasy #fantasyWriter #sffWriter #writersOfMastodon
#writersLife #writingCommunity #amWriting

Around 1500 words this morning, so #today marks the end of Chapter 11 and the passing of the half-way point for this draft. I set a notional target end-date of April 30th, and my spreadsheet is now telling me I need to hit 1535wpd to meet that goal. Eminently do-able, although I won't get an awful lot done when we head off to the Lake District next Friday for a week.

Really happy that the graph continues to track very close to a prediction of 100,000 words for the completed m/s, although it usually tends to bloat by anything up to 10% during the first edit, when I add more description.

Giving myself the rest of the day off now. A nice early finish (10.30). Time for an early lunch and a movie day.

#writing #SFF #fantasyWriter #sffWriter #writersOfMastodon
#writersLife #writingCommunity
#amWriting

A bumper word haul #today of almost 4,500 words brings Chapter 8 to a close. Drafting was interrupted by another rehashing of the plot or, more accurately, the scenes.

Chapter 9 consisted of several character scenes that could easily be compressed into fewer scenes overall, at which point it made more sense to move them up into Ch.8 or down into Ch.10. So the overall chapter count has been reduced by another 1 (to 21) and Ch.8 now ends on a nice action sequence for added unputdownability.

All this shifting about has impacted the projected final word count. As you can see from the graph it's now tracking almost exactly to 100,000, which will make it the same length as the very first book in the saga (and between them, the shortest books of the series by some margin).

#writing #SFF #fantasy #fantasyWriter #sffWriter #writersOfMastodon #writersLife #writingCommunity #amWriting

#today I reached the final editing phase of the WIP - running my trusty "Stop Words" macro prior to working through the whole document one last time, correcting any remaining passive voice (where necessary), confirming or replacing adverb choices, eliminating words repeated in too close proximity, and removing noise words like "just" and "that".

Once that's done all that's left is front- and back-matter, and wrangling it into Kindle and print formats. Almost there!

#writing #SFF #fantasy #fantasyWriter #sffWriter #writersOfMastodon #writersLife #writingCommunity #amEditing

So ward 13, my Queer friendly fantasy medical drama short story series currently has 4 stories and about 35k words. I'm tempted to tidy it all up and put it up as a novella on Kindle for like, A quid (or other platforms) . Would people be interested? #Writng #queerwriters #SFFwriter

It's been a while since I did an update. Last time I posted, having completed the first draft in record time, I was facing a To-Do list of 115 entries comprising things I'd skipped over during drafting.

Those TDs spawn like crazy. By the time I reached the end, it had grown to 135 and took much longer than expected. Mainly due to the larger items:

• Creating the game. I'd conceived this cool game that they play in the port, and aboard ship. All I really needed to do was be able to write about it in a coherent way, but I became fixated on the idea of making something that was actually playable. The prototype is with friends and daughters now - a kind of alpha-test of playability. If it works I still might try to find somewhere, like a maker space, to have it made. At the very least I'll include the board layout and rules as an appendix in this book, because it could theoretically be played on a sheet of paper.
• A deck plan for the ship. I had everyone walking up and down stairs and between decks without having tied down where all these locations were and how they connected. A nightmare of potential inconsistency. It took me about a week to draft a deck plan - something else that I'll include in the book with a high-res version downloadable from my website.
• a town plan. Similar argument to the deck plan, but for the port. In this case I'm not having a street map produced, but I did need that consistency.

I reached the end of the TDs between Christmas and New Year, and yesterday I finished the final Scrivener pass, checking for correct characterisation, speech patterns, and plot.

#today I say farewell to Scrivener for this WIP, export to Word and start the final readthrough before running my "overused, passive voice, and proximity word" macro in preparation for publication. Almost there!

#writing #SFF #fantasy #fantasyWriter #sffWriter #writersOfMastodon #writersLife #writingCommunity #amEditing

I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment #today

I began the second phase of editing last week: working through my "To-Do" list where I capture everything that's more than a "line edit". The more extensive changes, additional scenes, etc, that I discover are needed while drafting. Things were going well, until I hit the entry that said "I really need a deck plan for the ship."

During the draft I'd been throwing in lines describing where this cabin, that mast, or the other pile of sailcloth was located without any confidence that any of it made sense or was even consistent.

I found a cool deck plan for a galleon from a reliable source, and I've spent the last three days hacking it into something resembling the layout I had (vaguely) in mind. Really pleased with how it's turned out, and as an added bonus I've learned a bit more about GIMP. All it needs now is a Key, and to replace all the area, equipment, and deck names with those used in my world.

And then I can finally get back to the edits, and make sure all the scenes on board fit in with the newly realised layout. #Writing is about so much more than the actual writing isn't it?

#writersOfMastodon #amEditing #sffWriter #writingCommunity

The Last Update
I completed the first draft of book No5 last night. A late session (for me - finished at 10:25) delivering 3,700 words and bringing the final total to a smidge over 111,000.

Regular readers will know that's a significant drop on the ~140k that my spreadsheet predicted up to and including the end of drafting Ch5. As you can see from the graph it dropped off significantly towards the end.
Main reason is another large dollop of over-plotting in the final two chapters, which I needed to put right to keep the tension and pace up.

But I'm not worried. I'm still expecting the final thing to end up closer to 125k, which I'll be happier with. My expectation is based on having a to-do list of 115 items picked up during the draft, and also knowing that I need to flesh out the relationships between the old characters and those introduced during this book. I have at least half-a-dozen ideas how to do that, and none of them reduce the word count. 😆​

But for now, I'll leave it alone for two weeks to "steep", while I catch up with several admin tasks I've been putting off as the excitement about finishing the draft mounted. I expect to start editing somewhere around the start of November.

For my stats nerd friends:
Elapsed days drafting 70 (cutting in half my previous record of 142)
Current actual run rate (wpd) 1600 (maintained across the whole 70 days)
Actual completion date 9/10/23 (target was the end of this month)
Number of deleted scenes 24 (but some extras will be added back during the edit)
Final scene count 148 (over 23 chapters)

#writing #SFF #fantasy #fantasyWriter #sffWriter #writersOfMastodon #writersLife #writingCommunity #amWriting (soon to be #amEditing )

I put Chapter 17 to bed #today - six more to go.

Fewer stats than last time (don't want to overegg it):
Elapsed days drafting 58
Current run rate (wpd) 1600*
Projected completion date 21/10/23
Number of deleted scenes 18**

*I'm really quite pleased with this, mainly because it's the average across the full 58 calendar days, and there's been quite a few of those where no writing happened.

**Up from 8 in the last report, and you can see the effect of this in the graph. I did a minor replot of the "soggy middle" to tighten up the action. Also, I'd allowed one scene per character right in the middle of that action, which takes place on a new island. Turned out this was major overkill, so cutting, or merging, those scenes took me under the 125k predicted word count for a spell. As you can see it's slowly climbing back to converge with the target line again.

#writing #SFF #fantasy #fantasyWriter #sffWriter #writersOfMastodon #writersLife #writingCommunity #amWriting

2,500 words #today, and the completion of Chapter 11, which marks the halfway point (in terms of number of scenes completed).

Some stats:
Target daily word count
1000 (I like setting targets that are easily achievable, and then exceeding them)

Elapsed days drafting
39

Equivalent days at target word count
64

Current actual run rate (wpd)
1632

Notional target completion date
31/10/23

Projected completion date
08/11/23 (when I first set a target completion date, this was 31/12/23)

Number of deleted scenes
8*

So it looks like I'm on track to blow the target completion out of the water. With a current daily rate of ~1600 words and a required daily rate to hit that end of October target of 1166, it's pretty much tied on.

*This is one of the reasons for the drop in predicted final word count (now standing at ~125000). The way I plot - creating "plot" scenes for the story arc and "character" scenes for their arcs, and then eliminating any that overlap - allows a large degree of flexibility during the initial draft.
So if I find the story flows better if I move some plot element around, or another part would work better as one scene rather than splitting it over two, and so on, I end up with some redundant scenes.
While they're still in the count, they still affect the averages and predictions, but once I've decided to cut them, I set their word count to zero, which reduces the calculated values.

Anyway the TL;DR version is: It's all good, and will probably turn out to be the quickest draft I've ever done.

#writing #SFF #fantasy #fantasyWriter #sffWriter #writersOfMastodon #writersLife #writingCommunity #amWriting

Publication Day!!

The Second Berikatanyan Chronicles kicks off today with the publication of A Dance In The Dark. Follow all your favourite characters in the aftermath of the cataclysmic events of Juggler, and meet new ones as they explore the northern territories.

#amWriting #writersOfMastodon #bookstodon #sff #SffWriter #publicationDay #writersLife #writingCommunity

3300 words carved into Scrivener #today bringing me to the end of Chapter 7 and almost 30% through the book, which is still hovering around a prediction of 140k words, or a little lower.

It's looking like I may be able to hit my target completion date of October 31 after all. Current prediction is nearer to the end of November but I'm exceeding the run rate I need for that October date, so if I carry on like this I'll definitely catch up.

Plotting on book #3 is going well too. As of yesterday I put Snowflake Step 6 to bed, so I'm ready to start creating the scene list for that on my next plotting day. That should have been tomorrow, but we have NewHouse™ things to do, so it'll be bumped. It's OK to have a schedule, but sometimes life takes you out for the day 🙂​

#writing #SFF #fantasy #sffWriter #writersOfMastodon
#writersLife #writingCommunity
#amWriting

An epic 4,372 words #today to close out Chapter 5, while I was camped at my desk babysitting the small crew who came to board out our attic space this morning, plus the golden evening session too.

This puts me roughly 20% through the scene list, and heading for a final word count of 140k (which has been fairly stable for two chapters now).

Also found time to buy, assemble, and use a new electric lawnmower, after last week's experience trying to manhandle the enormous petrol mower (we inherited with the house) around our postage stamp lawn. "Never again!" I cried, and so mote it be.

#writing #SFF #fantasy #fantasyWriter #sffWriter #writersOfMastodon #writersLife #writingCommunity #amWriting

2500+ words written #today, bringing me exactly half way through Chapter 4. I've built up quite a buffer now in terms of target word count. I set a notional daily target of 1,000 (I like targets that are easily achievable) and in the 14 elapsed days I've been drafting I've written 19.3 days-worth of words. This makes me feel a bit more relaxed about tomorrow...

...when I'll be undergoing the rather scary sounding "Diagnostic oesophago-gastro-duodenoscopy" (which for non-medics like me basically means "a camera down the gob") in an effort to get to the bottom of my GORD (GERD). Well, not quite the bottom, obviously, because they start at the top and only go as far as the duodenum. Thank God.

Keep your fingers crossed for me. I'm sure it's all simple and mundane if you do it every day, but when you're the one with your mouth wedged open...

#amWriting #writersOfMastodon #sffWriter #writingCommunity

The last drafting day of the week #today and another 3,000 words (all but 56) to complete Chapter 3. The plotting for this book has been so tight that the drafting is going like a dream. I'd like to claim that will stop me complaining about plotting, but I know myself better than that.

The tracker is now predicting it'll be 130k words when it's finished (still fluctuating wildly) but more importantly it's also telling me that I'm exceeding the run rate I need to finish at the end of October, so it might even be ready for a Christmas release! (Yeah, right).

As promised, here's a graph too. The cyan line is the target line (basically shows the scene count by chapter, so starts at 0% and goes up to 100). The other lines give a visible clue how closely I'm tracking a novel that's going to end up being 100k words (yellow), or 125k (pink) or 150k (blue).

#amWriting #sffWriter #writingCommunity #writersOfMastodon

A massive -- for me -- 3,500 words #today (give or take), more than half of which came during the evening session. SO glad I decided to do this, although I gave myself a break over the weekend so it felt good to get back to it this evening.

With two scenes still to do in Chapter 2, my tracker reckons I'm on course for a final total of 120k, but that's extrapolated from very little evidence at this early stage. I'll probably share the graph later, when it's had time to stretch out to more than three small blobs in the bottom left-hand corner.

And even though it's early, it's never too early to start worrying about the pacing, and that some of the first scenes feel a bit... mundane. Imposter Syndrome, eh? Always there, snapping at your heels.

#amWriting #writingCommunity #sffWriter #fantasy #writersOfMastodon

A plotting day #today, and on to Book #6, the final book of the second trilogy. I like to intersperse drafting with a bit of plotting to keep things fresh.

All those copious notes I made while staring out at the beautiful Norwegian coast during our sailing expedition in January are now coming home to roost, meaning I was able to complete all of Step 4 (main story arc), and the first four (of 14) Step 5s (character arcs) today. Another good day. I can't call it a habit yet, but I haven't made this much progress, this early in either a draft or a plot, for a long, long time.

#amWriting #amPlotting #writersOfMastodon #writingCommunity #sffWriter

Almost 1800 words #today , spread between a morning and an evening writing session. These repurposed evenings are working out pretty well (on the evidence of two, lol).

That brings me to the end of Chapter 1. Hard to extrapolate at this early stage, but if I was to try, it's looking like I'm heading for a 100k total. Cool beans

#amWriting #writingCommunity #sffWriter #writersOfMastodon