the end, again again again
A few days ago, I was getting down with the happy dance of joy. (Sorry, no video evidence exists.) The reason for my dancing foolishness is that I once again made it to The End of The Overworld, the novel I've been working on for most of the past three years.
Specifically, I completed what I've been calling the fourth draft, since after writing the first draft, I did three full editing passes through the entire book. But it would really be more accurate to number the versions OW 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0. Or to be really accurate, there should be a more granular series of revision numbers to reflect the true number of passes through each chapter, but now I'm just getting gratuitously geeky.
In any event, I finished this stage of the editing project, which I started back in May, and it's an enormous relief to be done. I previously reported on all the problems I was having with the middle section of the novel, and the last third of the book wasn't any easier. (How naive I was back in January about how much of the plot still needed work.)
The manuscript is now about 120,000 words, down from 160k, down from 300k. 120,000 is on the longer side of novels, but within reason, and I think the length is justified by the story. A full answer to the question of how long that is in pages would require another foray into geekery, so I'm just going to say it's about 400 pages and leave you with that possibly inaccurate statement.
I stand by my earlier hubris: Sure enough, with this draft complete, I now feel confident that my novel will be attractive to agents. I have a bit of text cleanup to do in the next couple of weeks, and then I'm going to start querying in earnest.
But now, a bit of vacation!
Specifically, I completed what I've been calling the fourth draft, since after writing the first draft, I did three full editing passes through the entire book. But it would really be more accurate to number the versions OW 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0. Or to be really accurate, there should be a more granular series of revision numbers to reflect the true number of passes through each chapter, but now I'm just getting gratuitously geeky.
In any event, I finished this stage of the editing project, which I started back in May, and it's an enormous relief to be done. I previously reported on all the problems I was having with the middle section of the novel, and the last third of the book wasn't any easier. (How naive I was back in January about how much of the plot still needed work.)
The manuscript is now about 120,000 words, down from 160k, down from 300k. 120,000 is on the longer side of novels, but within reason, and I think the length is justified by the story. A full answer to the question of how long that is in pages would require another foray into geekery, so I'm just going to say it's about 400 pages and leave you with that possibly inaccurate statement.
I stand by my earlier hubris: Sure enough, with this draft complete, I now feel confident that my novel will be attractive to agents. I have a bit of text cleanup to do in the next couple of weeks, and then I'm going to start querying in earnest.
But now, a bit of vacation!