20,000 words!
I know I've been lax in my blogging, but I'll offer the same excuse. I've been working on the novel. I just reached 20,000 words, and it's really starting to take on a life of its own now. The story is taking me places I hadn't expected to go, and I'm having a whopping good time. Hope my readers enjoy it as much as I do.
The story is progressing a bit more quickly than I expected, too. I estimate I'm roughly a third of the way through, and if that holds true, then the finished novel will be approximately half the length of A Pebble Tossed. Which is good for you, because it'll be done sooner!
I'm thinking I'll have the first draft finished by late spring. After that, I'll leave it alone for a while, maybe all summer, and pick it up again, let's say in autumn, and start working on the second draft. That should go much quicker than the first, let's say a month.
I'm hoping like hell not to have to go through five rewrites like I did with my first novel, and depending on my many beta readers to help me achieve that. I think it'll work. Maybe it's too ambitious to plan on publishing my second draft, but I hope that, if two doesn't do the trick, three will definitely put that final polish on it.
Still looking good for a December release date. But that could change.
On the bummer side: I still don't have a title. I'm not very fond of Rookie Card, which is just what I came up with when I had to have something to name the blasted file, and I can guarantee that it will not be the eventual title. The title will come to me when it comes to me, and that's that. There's no sense in forcing it. "A Pebble Tossed" didn't come to me until very very late in the process. It was something like the fifth or sixth title I gave to that book, with every previous title being wrong in one way or another. When "A Pebble Tossed" came to me, I knew it was the one I'd been waiting for, and I'm still very happy with it. I'm hoping it will work out that way again for the next novel.
