Novel Writing Update #5

I’m officially halfway through my novel Crescent Regent. This is draft #5, standing at about 60,000 words thus far, and I’m so ready to reach the 100,000 word mark. None of my manuscripts have ever reached 100,000 yet, but I’m more than certain I’ll get there at my current pace. It also has twenty written chapters, and my current hope is to end the novel on chapter 40. I like having even numbers, and I put “The End Of Part One” at the bottom of chapter 20, so I’d like to end it that way.

Honestly, I’m beginning to see myself as an outline writer more than a pantser writer, which I thought I was at first. A pantser is someone who writes without making an outline. I sort-of make outlines for every scene in my journal on the side to get the “bad writing” out of me, and organizing through the handwritten words crafting better sentences. Last week during Writers Group meeting, a fellow writer pointed out how I tend to use too much exposition, and she has a good point. It’s because my best creative ideas are so massive that they tend to get “too big” in the story. Writing them out first in a journal, and examining them this way has helped me sort out my brain a lot more. It’s refreshing having a clear head once in a while.

That’s all I got so far. My Writing Group is incredibly helpful and patient. They want to read it, but I have to wait until the entire thing is finished… and I have to rewrite the chapters I’m ignoring in favor of finishing it to the end. Thanks everyone who’s been checking up on me and my progress. I appreciate it.