6332 words today. I got the novel done!!!!!!
Man, this was a long one. It clocks in just shy of 75K.
I feel great about this one, but the final chapters did shake some things up that I may need to correct in Book 1—thank goodness I didn’t publish it yet LOL
I learned several things while writing this book:
#1: It’s perfectly fine to walk away from a novel in the middle. You can always pick up and restart….even though it might be tough at first.
#2: Writing into the dark always pays dividends. Always. But I already knew that. Every book I finished just makes it more real.
#3: When I die, I hope I’ll go to heaven. But if I don’t, my version of hell will be making progress toward a novel every day but not finishing it…
All jokes aside, I’m glad I got to the end of this one. It was a long road, and this was a crazy book. Every novel is unique in its own right, and this one stands out for being 1) the longest novel I’ve ever written and 2) the most “in the dark” I’ve ever been while writing.
I honestly didn’t know exactly how the book was going to end until I wrote the final 1000 words. That’s really rare. Usually, once I see the glimmer, the story gets clearer as I go. I saw the glimmer, but things didn’t really get clearer right away. This novel kept me on the edge of my seat waiting to see how my creative voice would resolve the story. If I’m lucky, that will translate when people read it. If I’m not lucky and this book bombs, I still wrote the story on my heart, so I walk away a winner. This novel delves into very dark territory that I didn’t expect, so it was an interesting exploration and experiment.
NEXT STEPS
This novel is longer than I anticipated, so I have some work to do before I start writing the next book.
Starting tonight, I’ll start re-reviewing the book in my final loop so I can go through and align anything that is out of order given what I wrote in the last few chapters.
For every chapter I review, I will also review the chapter of the same number in Book 1. This way, I’m reviewing the entire series comprehensively so that everything is cohesive. This is necessary because I stopped writing this book in the middle. Normally I like to write my series straight-through because it avoids issues like this. But I didn’t do that this time.
The review process will probably take at least 2 days, maybe 3.
Next, I will run the novel through my editing engine. That will take at least 1 day.
Then, I will send the book to my fact checkers with a three-day turnaround. Once it goes to them, I will start writing Cold Hard Magic. Should be hopefully end of this week, but we’ll see.
I want to keep my Beast Mode momentum so I’ll be writing at least a chapter a day toward Indie Author Confidential Vol. 7. I’ve also got some additional work to do on the writing app book, so I’ll finish that as well.
Anyhoo, time to get some early rest. This novel was a real puzzle to figure out. My brain hurts a little.
