November was the first full month spent as a self-published writer, but it was no time to bask in the light of my achievement. The journey is far from over, and it has its ups and downs in November.

So, what was I up to? As I said, I started reading through #3 to check teh continuity, and I’ve finished that early in the month. That gave me a headache more than anything else – looking at a draft written in 2018 only showed me how poor my writing was back then. Sure, It’s probably far from a masterful craft, but if I consider something really bad… I guess you get the picture.

Part of me wanted to go back to work on #2 but all I could’ve done on that were minor edits. But given the time before Christmass, it’s not the right time to reach my betas when there may be more important things in their to-do list than reading, and I want to give them some time to read the final version of book one (especially those who were my early betas as the story changed a lot since then).

So, the logical choice would be to work on #3. As I’ve mentioned, I got sick early in the month, and this proved poor for writing at first – my mood was awful until the moment I got the message that the test was COVID-negative, and the bad mood lingered for a day more. But I’ve dived into it, eventually, and made a few steady bites.

As of now, 22 of 62 chapters were edited – and because of the poor state, it’s pretty much complete rewrite: dialogues are awful, it’s almost pure telling and almost no showing, there’s too much fluff, and so on. The edits done on the first 22 chapters dropped the word count from 176k to 156k. I guess it may drop as low as 120-130k by the end, even though there are scenes that will need to be expanded. 25% drop, similar to book one, is very likely.

Anyway, I’d love to get book three in complete second draft by the year’s end – and considering I have a few vacation days left to be used in December, it may give me a chance. It’ll depend on how thorough I’ll be on filling in some gaps – as it’s still an early draft, I can afford to have some scenes unfinished while there are more immediate goals (such as preparing the paperback).

Compared to the past few months, this doesn’t seem like a major update, but it’s still come progress.

For now, that’s all from me – I hope you’re doing well. Feel free to comment, share your experience, or ask questions.

See you next time.