I have now passed the 80,000-word mark. Appropriately for a story set during World War ll, the 80,000th word was ‘Germans’. At least that means something. It could just as easily have been something banal, like ‘if’ or ‘very’.
Having already met briefly earlier in the book, Bruno and Alice are about to encounter one another again, but under different circumstances. I won’t give away any more details for entirely selfish reasons. I hope that people will buy the book and enjoy reading it. That is, I hope they will buy it for my sake, because I will get the royalties, but I hope that they enjoy it for theirs.
In terms of pages, 80,000-words corresponds to, roughly, 270. By the time it is finished, it will be well over 300 and may even top 400. Time will tell on that. I have the rest of the story combed out in broad strokes in my head, but the fine details will only be added during the writing. When I write, I work in this manner. On Day One I write three or four pages (1200 to 1500 words, generally spoeaking). That is as much as my brain can cope with in one session. This first draft is, inevitably, unsatisfactory. It consists almost entirely of action and dialogue. No description? No comment? There will be some, but not a lot at this stage. The next day, I go back over what I wrote the previous day, revising it, putting in thr description and detail that I failed to produce the first time round. I usually manage to increase the passage’s length by around 50%. After vthat, I go on to write another two or three pages of first draft, which will be expanded the following day. That may sound bizarre to someone who has never written a book, but it is the way that my brain works. Thus, creating a book is not simply a question of writing it down. It is a lengthy process of growth and gradual improvement as passages are rewritten, replaced or even discarded altogether. By the time it is published, the entire book will have been thoroughly revised many times.
With Christmas only a month away, it certainly won’t be finished this year. Currently, I am targetting a publication date of February next year.
Now, I have to go through it all again before clicking on the ‘Publish’ button. Unless I have missed it, WordPress (the company that hosts this website) doesn’t have a spelling checker. Although I am a good speller, I am only a two-finger typist. I am a fast two-finger typist, but with speed comes typing errors. When using a word processor, the spellcheck function traps them for me. With this, though, I have to go back through what I have written and find them for myself. Apologies if I have missed any.
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