Mist and Shadows

The rough draft of Winter Wolves is complete, finally.  Did around 1600 words today to wrap it up and the grand total of draft comes to around 55,600 words.

Much work remains to be done, especially on the ending.  It is decent, but has the potential to be much better.  Plus need to add another 20-25,000 words during the rewrite.

Still, it feels good to be finished with the draft.  Might have a day or two off from it, working on a few short stories, but I can’t let up now – must press on, get it in a decent, finished format, then start shopping it around in the remote chance someone may think it is worth publishing.

Incidentally, I love that word, Huzzah.

The rough draft of Winter Wolves is finally nearing completion, and has just passed 50,000 words.

I have just started the 20th of 21 planned chapters, so not long until the rough draft is done and I can start the rewrite, as well as adding in extra scences that I have planned in the meantime.  There are a number of them that need doing.

Something of an odd title, but currently I am both two thirds and one half through writing Winter Wolves.

How can it be both?  Simply, I have written fourteen of the twenty one planned chapters, meaning that that part is two thirds complete.  Likewise I have written roughly half the planned words.

I am not too worried about the word count lagging behind – this is after all the rough draft and will undoubtedly expand during the rewrite.  The first three chapters, which have already been subject to a rewrite underwent this.  They roughly doubled in total during their rewrite, and now total around 17,000 words between them.  The subsequent ten written chapters in total only make around 20,000 words, but that will increase in length as they are written.

Plan now is to write the last seven chapter, hopefully over the next seven days, and bring the rough draft to a close.  Then the rewrite and polish can commence.

I just did a quick count on what has been written so far, including today’s efforts so far, and the total has now passed 30,000 words, half way through chapter ten.

All in all around 2/5ths of a book, so still a fair way to go, but progress is being made at last.

After a great deal of difficulty, I’ve finished chapter five, sort of.  Well, I’ve got a draft of chapter five done – though I am far from satisfied with it.  With the previous chapters, while there are a few parts I know need some work, at least I am satisfied with the chapter in general.  Not in this case with chapter five – it will need a total rewrite when i get to the rewrite stage.

At least it is done now and I can move on before having to think about it for a while. The catalyst for completing it I suppose was an idea I had while walking – a conversation played itself out in my head. Of course, by the time I got to sit down and write it out, it didn’t play out as well as it had in my head – another part that needs to be rewritten at some stage.

But for now, on with the story.

Day is not quite done yet, but so far I have done around seven hours of work and passed 6K words written, a new record for a day for me.

Admittedly I did cheat a little as I was doing a rewrite of the first chapter of Winter Wolves so many of those words had been written before.

Even so, the old first chapter was around 4300 words in length and the new one now stands at almost 6500.

It certainly feels good to get so much done though, even if it was just a rewrite. I may even be able to squeeze in a couple more hours later to start the rewrite of the old chapter two.

I only had chapters one to three fleshed out previously, so in a couple of days when I’ve given them a rewrite it will be back to fleshing out the subsequent chapters from the long synopsis, which will undoubtedly slow matters down.

Still, if I can keep this pace up I may be able to finish the novel ready for polishing sooner than expected.