I might not be Brandon Sanderson, who knocks off revision 2.0 in under a week for a book with more than a hundred thousand words, but getting it done in just over six months isn’t too shabby.
My first book took two years to get the ball rolling. Two and a half years to finish draft one (which I hated). A year and a half to get draft two done (which was nice for a first book). Then an additional six months to finish it. A total of six and a half years!
This one was much quicker. A month and a half brainstorming. Six months for draft 1.0, six months for 2.0. Plotting everything at the start sure did help.
I finished revision two with a few story tweeks, word smithing and a run through with Grammarly, to find those pesky commas. Now it’s up to pen and pencil to finish the job.
I also ran some statistics. My previous book, On the Shoulders of Giants, had 5.300 unique words (without I, and, in, …) and 53.000 such words in total.
Ma’dain Aurora has 6.300 unique words, 58.000 in total. An improvement, considering that Harry Potter has 5.000 uniques, 40.000 in total. I’m not where I want to be, but I am moving up (yes Brandon, I’m looking at you with 9,500 unique words in an average novel).
A few more months and the book can be shipped to my Alphas. Then, a short story to commemorate my achievement and on to the next project.
Until then, happy writing.
Peter