Well… This is embarrassing.
It’s been just over four months since my last blog post. I’ve been half-dreading writing this update and I’ve been putting it off for quite some time. But, here I am anyway with a little bit of accountability.
As I’m sure you can tell from the early tone of this post, I haven’t done much in the way of drafting book 2. Or revising book 1. Or much of anything substantial writing-wise. Let me give a small explanation. Accountability, see?
I spent all of 2020 deeply involved in writing book 1. I wrote the first draft from January to June. I made deep revisions with draft 2 from June to November. I sent the book out for beta reader feedback from November to February.
And I was exhausted.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my books and I want nothing more than to finish it and to have successfully completed a full story (for those that don’t know or can’t remember, this particular story arc is planned to just be two books, a duology). However, going as hard as I did may not have been the best of ideas. After over a year of pushing pretty hard, it felt like I was working two jobs. I started to feel a bit burned out, to be honest. That on top of some personal happenings in life, and something had to give.
So I took a break.
That break ended up being a bit longer than I had originally anticipated. I continued to think about my story and I made notes to myself on revisions I wanted to make to book 1. I reviewed the chapter-by-chapter outline I made for book 2 to keep myself refreshed. I even opened up what I had for draft 1 of book 2 and re-read it a couple times in anticipation of continuing. But I never actually started writing again. And I felt pretty guilty about that.
I had people coming up to me every so often and asking how my book was going. That was great because it meant people were even a little bit invested in my progress (thank you to those of you who asked), but it also meant I had to tell them no progress had been made. I had stopped near the end of chapter 8, and that’s where it sat for months.
But a potential light at the end of the tunnel (hopefully).
I decided today that I would pick book 2 back up . I finished chapter 8 on a whim and decided I would get back into regularly writing again. I don’t think I’ll be as hardcore as I was with writing book 1 though (5,000 words a week is obviously doable even with a full-time job and a young family, as I already did it with book 1, but it’s a pretty intense pace). That means it will more than likely take me longer to finish draft 1 of book 2, and I’m ok with that.
Book 1 is currently sitting at 44 chapters (including the Prologue) and around 400 pages long. Book 2 is planned out to 59 chapters (including the Epilogue), which means it will more than likely break 500 pages at least. This is going to be a long process, especially considering it took me 5 months at a blistering pace to finish book 1.
I currently don’t have a hard and fast daily or weekly goal for number of words. I want to somewhat ease back into the process and see how far I get. In future blog updates, I may decide its good to add an actual number goal, but for now I just want to get back into the story, back into writing, and see where I get to.
More than anything, I want to finish this story. I somewhat imagine it as one big epic, but I didn’t want my first book to be an intimidating 1,000 page monstrosity. Think of it like Harry Potter 7 Parts 1 and 2. One story broken up into two standalone chunks. I just want to have a satisfying ending, one big arc for the plot I came up with some time ago.
This post rambled on a bit, but hopefully its a satisfying enough update for those who may still be following along. I haven’t given up on writing, and hopefully those one or two that still ask me on writing updates will get more than just a, “I’m still taking a bit of a break”. You know who you are.
Here’s to hoping I get to move that book 2 progress bar. Until next month.