aaaaaaand DONE!

I finished draft 1 of novel 2, tentatively titled "The Spirit Thief" at 10 last night. It clocks in at 54,600 words, which is too short, but I'm not worried. I skipped over a lot at the end, and I'm going to be adding several scenes in the edit. The final word count should be around 65-70k, putting it in prime marketability range.

Now, it's time for two weeks off while I move, plan novel 2, do some world building, and figure out how to solve all the problems I glossed over in this draft. I've got my work cut out for me.

Here's the schedule (Monday to Monday):
8/27 - 9/10: Move in, world build, brainstorm for edits, let the work sit. Brain storm for book 2 to see if I need to add any set up.
9/10 - 10/8: First edit, fix all plot issues, get my word count up, fix characterization, add in foreshadowing, basically turn a rough draft into a finished draft.
10/8 - 10/15: Let draft sit again, write first draft of query letter, synopsis, etc. Put together a spreadsheet of agents to contact.
10/15 - 11/5: Second edits. This is the final sweep, clean up readability, word flow, check pacing, grammar, etc.
11/5-12/3: Print up and hand out reader copies. Do spot edits, revise query letter and synopsis.
12/3-12/31: Incorporate reader comments, do one final read through chapter by chapter, prepare queries for mail out.
1/2: Mail out first batch of queries. After that, mail out 5 queries per week until it sells or I get sick of being rejected.
1/3: Start writing new book.

A nice, spread out schedule, I think. This time I want to be SURE the book is as fantastic as I can make it before mailing it out. For right now, though, I'm going to take a breather and bask in the glow of doneness (and type out some of these ideas that have been poking at me lately).

Two novels down, infinity to go.

Time to try something new

For Novel 1, I didn't really have a writing focus other than to tell the story. My guiding vision was a clear window that showed the story perfectly to the reader with as few author-opinion wobbles as possible. This was an interesting idea, but it fell flat because transparent prose is nothing prose.

For Novel 2, I'm going to try something new. First, I'm going to try and get down as much as possible as fast as possible. Take a bare bones, just-the-facts-ma'am approach. Hopefully, this will let me get the pacing right the first time and get a better handle on the length, because DAMN, can I be long winded.

After I finish the quick and dirty version, I'm going to go back and add another layer using what I've learned from the story to really round out the world and the characters. Think of it as 2 draft 0.5s merging to make a first draft. Then, I'll set it aside for a month before editing.

Using this method, I hope to build up before I cut down, and come out with a novel that's both structurally and prosaically superior than Novel 1.

So, we'll see how this works. It could fail, or I could fail, flail, and dump it. It's worth a try, though.