Jubal's Writing Blog

[Jubal]

In which I write about writing. There's no way I'm actually going to keep this up, but hey, it's a way to occasionally update people on progress.

I'm writing a book! It's currently 16000 words or so long, aiming for 50-60 thousand according to my plan, cut into about fifteen chapters. It's basically a quirky children's fantasy book with the chapters forming fairly independent stories to make it good for e.g. bedtime story reading. The first three chapters are now complete, along with chunks of a bunch of later chapters - I'm currently rather stalled trying to work out a plot for Ch. 4 though.

[Jubal]

Trying to simultaneously work on bits of 5, 6, and 7, all of which have worked out plots but need a lot of fleshing out. heading for 22,000 words now, so almost certainly over a third of the way through the book, though halfway still feels some distance off!

5 is a simple friends-y sort of story, which is about cheering up one of the characters who is sad - those sorts of tales are important for this kind of book, I think, as I need a fair number of "toned down" chapters and to hold down the threat level in the "adventure" chapters to keep the tone right. Doing a Tolkien and suddenly flipping writing styles into full epic is something I'm fairly sure I'll be fine at avoiding, but I do see where the temptation to do that comes from so I think it's an instinct I ought to think about keeping in check...

[comrade_general]

I can see it now;

"What's wrong, Henry?" Larry asked.
Henry simple looked down at the floor. His face grew pale and his eyes filled with tears. His delicious hot dog, which moments before had been resting comfortably on the edge of the countertop, now lay at his feet. Blobs of mustard found their way onto everything within a meter radius. Henry could only cover his face and walk away.
Carrying himself to the door Henry opened it to see portugalING T-REX'S FLYING F16'S OVERHEAD! THEY WERE LAUNCHING A FULL SCALE ATTACK ON THE LLAMA/BOVINE CENTRAL COMMAND NEXT DOOR, WHICH WERE THEMSELVES FIRING WILDLY INTO THE AIR WITH AK-47'S AND RPG'S.

[Jubal]

I now want to write the llama war book, but alas I should probably finish this one first.

I reached 24000 words today, which is a bit depressing to have only done 2k in the last month. Word 24,000 was "the" which feels a little anticlimactic. But oh well, plenty to be getting on with!

[Jubal]

Today I reached forty thousand words Reasonably determined that at some point this book will be finished!

[Tusky]

You can do it! Not long to go now then?

[Jubal]

My calculations suggest that 58 to 60 will be where the end is, so a fair way yet but I've got two thirds done now. Seven chapters out of sixteen are still lacking a complete draft.

[Jubal]

Got back to some writing on this - 5 chapters still not fully drafted, I've added about 2000 words in the past couple of days to reach a bit above 49000. If I work on this again tomorrow I should get another chapter completed and break the 50,000 barrier

I am continuing to throw lots of random details into the thing - this chapter contains a brief discussion of the concept of elfshot - but hopefully it's done in a sufficiently reader friendly way.

[Jubal]

Didn't get the chapter completed at least yet (and I should rest soon), but word #50,000 was "time" First piece of anything I've ever written to break that word count barrier.

[Jubal]

OK, this month the plan is to finish the book. We'll see if I manage it.

Still 4 chapters at varying levels of incomplete (one is a few hundred words away, one about a thousand short, one 1500 or so short, and one barely started). Passed 54,000 words today, I've added about 2500 or so of those within the past week, so if I keep going at this pace I should get the book finished by the end of the month. Fingers crossed!

[Jubal]

Down to 2 incomplete chapters, and one of the two remaining ones is well over half done... the other, however, I'm hitting a complete block on, and it's the last chapter. I have a sort of aesthetic quality I want to get over with it, but how to turn that into a plot that makes sense and doesn't end up repeating the chapter two previous to it is really stumping me at the moment.

[Jubal]

I appear to have written a book. Good heavens.

I mean, this is only a percentage of the way through the process, but I have a complete draft of a book. Which feels a bit surreal.

[Tusky]

Amazing!

Well done

[Ierne]

Exciting news!

[Jubal]

Thanks both! The next steps are going to be editing, finding children-age beta readers, and looking into publishing options, which will probably be a lot of work. But I'm trying to just do the "finding beta readers" bit immediately, and leave off publisher think for a few weeks while I chat to people about the options.