Still going on six years on my book, finally finished on my 2nd draft. I got the beginning and end down but middle part was just not fitting well. I just gutted the middle, started writing again. The 1st and 2nd drafts are not even the same. I took parts from draft 1 to fit the plot of my second draft. I got to re-read to make sure follows the plot. Still there is alot of work to do smoothing and tweaking out the 2nd draft. Im just relieved finishing the 2nd draft. I got to make the supporting characters not so like background noise but are just important as the MC. Gotta do detail on the setting, vehicles, weapons etc. Writing this while working full time, going to college and handling my moms estate. Im trying to complete my book end of the year hopefully I can.
Congrats! Finishing the second draft is definitely a big step as its typically so different than the first and requires mostly changing and rewriting everything. I would try to bang out a couple more drafts and then sit on it for a while and not look at it. I put my MS away after Draft 6 and haven't looked at it in nearly four months. Its been a nice change of pace to work on other projects as I was definitely feeling burnt out from that story after spending nearly every day of two years on it. But now after the break, I'm excited again about the story and can't wait to go back and polish it up with a fresh mind.
I feel burnt out on it, just exhausted from life atm. I don't know how many other drafts will come after the 2nd one. I just keep making every other draft smoother and polished. I enjoy reading the blog of terrible minds, to just only focus on this book until I publish it. It's just I've been writing this for six years, off and on during my time in the military, just want to finish it look back a mile stone achievement. I feel longer I take writing this book, the more doubtful it becomes. I guess I take this struggle, applying this plot from start to finish in the book. I just realized after total of words in my book is 196,463. Is that too much?!?
Well done! Too much for what? If traditional publishing then yes, probably. Books of that length have been published but very, very rarely, and not recently. I wouldn't worry about word count until you have a final polished version, though.
Well I've been thinking of taking the traditional publishing route. Just recently I've been thinking that my main book could be split in two since it's becoming longer as I add more stuff to it. I have the beginning and end solid, just spent writing redoing the middle part. I was aiming around 100k or so words tops, because a book over 100k words people will loose their attention span on it. Harry Potter was 77k, Hunger Games was 99k, but game of thrones was like 298k words. I'm targeting the type of customers that are average readers, but enjoy sci-fi thrillers. If I do split it in two, I got to have a good ending as for the middle portion and people wanting to continue reading the second book.
YAY! Editing over 190, o00 words? I'd be exhausted, too. haha But that just makes the feat of finishing the 2nd draft all the more praise-worthy. Keep it up!
High five for another behemoth-writer who's just finished the second draft. Taken me two and a half years to get to this stage, and I'm working on the third draft. Still got some (re-)re-writing to do but the troublesome elements of the plot finally seem to be crystallising. Difficult to say how much I've got since it's quite scattered, but it was somewhere in the region of 210,000 words. I don't think 200k is as uncommon a length as is said, though usually you are an established author with a known record that the publisher knows will sell. So if you could split your book, that would improve your chances, although it would be more advantageous if it had enough of a resolution in the first part to stand on its own two feet too. Just like publishers aren't likely to gamble with a long book from an unknown, they won't gamble with a book that is "Part 1" in all but name. Since if it does take off, then fair play, but if it doesn't, everybody loses: you, the publisher and the readers, if the readers are buying into a story that will stay unresolved forever! This is just my theorising - I don't know anything about how the industry works, but it seems logical in my mind! Stick at it! Some days, it feels like I've been getting nowhere and I should just pack it in. But then what would the last six years have been for, eh? We're basically tied at the hip to our respective novels now. What else can we do now, but finish it? Though I still have a fair bit of excitement left in me yet. I carry on writing because I can't help myself. Because it's a story I really enjoy, with all its characters and world, and I'd like to populate it with new stories (if I don't die of old age before then). I doubt I can condense it into less than 200k, but I love it as it is. Ah well.
I was trying to make my first book more of a 'stand alone' book, where the plot is good enough to be left alone and have a decent ending, but if it is a success I can expand the book into more squeals. I have one part in my book, where in the middle it could be my ending for the first book. Thing is it would be more like a cliff hanger, where the ending leaves more questions like what's going to happen next? I enjoy books that give me action thriller type of read, Adrenalin drive. There is few chapters in my book that could expand on, but I'm just eager to finish it. The more I add to it, the more it makes things complicated. If I split my book or not, either way it's a gamble?
