One step at a time

Koen has reached 100k words! Well, almost. I am at 96,908, but I will reach 100k this week, and by the time I can fit a blog post into my schedule, it will be old news. For me, 100k is a significant milestone. It was the golden number when I set out to write my first novel. The average adult novel length is 90k or about 360 pages, but 100k is such a nice round number, and why not throw in that extra 10k or good measure? I had read at the time that it would be nearly impossible for first-time authors to get anything over 100k published, and the advice stuck. But the average varies by genre. For fantasy, the standard is more like 120k-150k due to the extra space needed for world-building, which is my goal for this story, but a celebration at 100k is still one of my traditions.

Koen is no longer a work in progress. It is an unfinished novel. I know that distinction is subtle, but it means the book will happen. For a writer, the doubt of whether the story’s momentum will continue is always there. I have several works that pittered out before this mark sitting in a drawer someplace. Well, actually, it is a folder on my desktop, but that doesn’t have the same pizazz. At a certain point, you see the ending, and it becomes just a matter of getting there. That is the 100k mark for me. The final push will be quick. With that destination on the horizon, it gives me an impetus to get there, and my daily word count usually increases.

I state the obvious here, but the birth of another novel is exciting. I’ve said many times in this blog that writing a book is not very hard, and I still believe that. It is just taking one step at a time toward a destination. But it does take a lot of time, and for many of us, that is a precious commodity. I started writing Koen on January 25th, making this my sixth month of working on it, or 171 days of writing almost every single day. Let’s put that into perspective. The average person traveling by foot could walk about 20 miles a day. At 171 days, that is 3,420 miles. The greatest distance between two points in the continental United States is 2,802 miles, so I could have walked across the entire US and made it about a fourth of the way back again. That’s quite the journey!

If I continue at one thousand words daily, I should finish Koen by the end of August, which is perfect because the academic year will start, and work will become a bear. Proofreading, editing, and formatting take much less time, and I should have Koen ready by the fall. As you may recall, I plan to try getting Koen traditionally published and have given myself a year to see if I can get any traction in that endeavor. It has been more the ten years since I’ve explored that avenue, so the journey should be interesting. Of course, I will do my best to document that experience here and share what wisdom I learn along the way- and lament the struggles ;). If nothing promising happens with Koen, I will self-publish as usual. After Koen’s story is complete, I plan to continue with book four of the Absolution of the Morning Star Series, Destiny of the Daystar. It should be a quick write as it has been percolating the whole time while working on Koen, and I have at least half a book ready for the page already.

Well, the saga continues. As always, I’m interested in your thoughts, so please leave a comment below. And lastly, whatever your journey, keep taking one step at a time, and you’ll get there eventually.

Cheers!