So, the 11th month of the year is over. Time to share how my writing went in the past 30 days.

In the last update, I mentioned finishing the 7th draft and working on the 8th where I’d attempt some larger change. Fact is that I had most of those thought-through quite a lot and thus it was just a matter of writing them – which took me little time once I went and hammered it.

The 8th draft took mere 18 hours of ‘clean’ writing time – spread into four, maybe five days – and was finished on 3.11.

I followed by a self-made proofread which took over a week and fixed some issues, then prepared for the next stage of beta – which I’d really love to be the last but… I hoped every of the previous 4 drafts was the last and here I am, still working on it.

Anyway, the word count is now down to some 168k which, again, reminds me of the times I first saw the “cut 10% at least” and thought it impossible back in time when the draft was at 240k – only to see it’s now down to roughly 70% of the original length.

And I’ve noticed a few typos only after I’ve finalized that draft but those are small things I’ll be sorting out until the very end anyway.

As the 8th draft was purely my work (all feedback was processed in the previous, 7th draft), it went pretty fast – but now I am back in the stage when I’ll be just waiting to find betas (my goal would be 2-3 again) and see what they say so I’ll probably have to find something else to keep my creative side occupied in December – maybe I’ll give the sequels a nudge or work on the concepts of the potential prequels.

In the meantime, I’ve also updated the prologue sample on this weblog to the current version.

So, that’s the November summary – see you next time.