Upcoming Writing Schedule

You’ve likely noticed the word count trackers located to the right-hand side of the blog, which I’m using to track my past, present, and future writing and editing endeavors. I wanted to explain the trackers, the color scheme I’m using for them, and what that means for those interested in upcoming publications.

Word count is a more common metric for writing than page count, as page count doesn’t necessarily give a consistent indication of the length of the work. The closest thing to a standard definition of a novel is 40,000+ words, not a specific page count. Most commercial novels are at least 80,000 words, and different genres often feature books of well over 100,000 words. (For reference, A QUESTION OF WILL runs 101,000 words.) You can estimate page count by assuming a certain number of words per page, with common estimates running between 250 and 350 words. I typically use 300 have a sense of the length of a book. So, 90,000 words in that case would equate to around 300 printed pages. Variation would come from font sizes, margins, and length of average paragraphs (shorter paragraphs = more printed pages), as well as white space (does the author leave a full blank page between paragraphs, for example). For ebooks, page counts are meaningless as the number of words displayed on the screen at any given time can change based upon font size preferences of the reader.

Now, on to the word count trackers and the color scheme.

Each work will start in a planning stage. This will involve me doing the very uninteresting task of thinking through each story and jotting down the key happenings in each work. This does not include any excessive efforts for researching, character back stories, or even detailed events and sequences. I might write a few pages in “book report” form during this stage, simply to test out approaches to telling a story that will include those key scenes and events. Works in this planning stage will be colored gray.

I’ll then start the writing of the rough draft. For me, this is the creative portion, where I’ll plow through as quickly as I can, unconcerned about grammar, spelling, plot consistency, and the like. The goal here is to get the meat of the story down on paper as quickly as possible. During this phase, I’ll keep lists of additional ideas on the plot, character development, and the like which come to me after I’ve left a scene. In some cases, these ideas might represent a point to expand time spent on a specific topic, an observation about a character’s reaction to a scene, or perhaps even a note that a certain scene needs to be completely redone. Note that, in my vast experience of going through this phase twice now (WILL and HOPE), I will often try the rapid writing and realize 10-12,000 words in that the approach I’m taking is simply unworkable, and I’ll start over. (This happened TWICE with WILL, actually.) You may see strange downward revisions in word counts during this phase for that reason. It simply means that my most recent approach wasn’t correct, and in my opinion cannot be fixed, even with editing. This phase will be represented with a blue color.

When I’m editing, whether it’s adding in new ideas, checking spelling and grammar, or final proofreading, the book will have a red color. (Red pens for editing, right?) Word count will vary during this phase; the more severe the change in word count, the more likely it is that I’m doing content edits than proofreading edits. I may elect to add a second counter for proofreading editing runs that simply show number of chapters completed.

Finally, published works will be shown with final (approximate) word counts and will be colored green.

As i write this, heading into November of 2012, current projects are as follows:

• PLANNING: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I’m writing a murder mystery that’s demanding to leave my head and denying my brain access to Book 3 for the Aliomenti. This will be my primary “blue” project during November, and by the time this post goes live the tracker will undoubtedly be blue.
• WRITING: I’m writing the Aliomenti Saga prequel, which describes a previous encounter between Will Stark and the Hunters; a more “normal” Hunt; and the events that led to the Hunters finding Will and triggering the events at the start of A QUESTION OF WILL. It will be much shorter than the other novels in the series, more in the 20-30,000 word range than the 80,000+ words of the other novels. (That would technically make it a novella, a term for works 17,500-40,000 words in length). The prequel draft should be done in the first few days of November, at which point it will move to the Editing queue and the NaNoWriMo work will take center stage for writing.
• EDITING: I’ll be going through edits on the draft of the second Aliomenti novel, titled PRESERVING HOPE. My hope (pun possibly intended) is to release this in early December. I’ll then edit and release the prequel.

A few other projects of note:

• Several have asked about paperback availability. I am actually working to provide this option through Amazon’s CreateSpace Print On Demand service. It’s likely this will be available before PRESERVING HOPE is released.
• I’ve also been asked about availability on non-Kindle ebook platforms. Right now, WILL is part of Amazon’s “Select” program, which provides some excellent promotional options and makes the book available to borrow for Amazon Prime customers. It also comes with a requirement of exclusivity for 90 days. Thus, I cannot make the book available via Barnes & Noble, Kobo, the iTunes bookstore, or other online formats until I’m no longer in the program. The 90 days are up in the first few days of 2013, and I’ll need to decide whether to remain in Select or opt out. If it’s the latter, then I’ll be uploading to the other other major sites as quickly as I can.
• If the current schedule holds, I should have the prequel, Book 1, and Book 2 of the Aliomenti Saga out by the end of 2012, though with any schedule slippage that may get pushed into early 2013. I’ll then put the NaNoWriMo novel into the editing grinder and start plotting Book 3. My goal is to have one book in the planning stage, one in the writing stage, and one in the editing stage at all times; how well that will line up remains to be seen.

That’s where we stand at the moment. Have a question for me? Feel free to contact me via Facebook or Twitter (links at the top of the page) or use the Contact button to the left.

If you want to be alerted to new blog posts as soon as they are posted, click on the Follow button located at the bottom right of the screen. That lets you receive new blog posts via email.

As always, many thanks to those who continue to read A QUESTION OF WILL and who constantly ask for updates on Book 2’s availability. It’s a tremendous feeling to know that so many have an interest in reading what I’m writing, and those comments make the late night writing and editing hours far less a strain than they otherwise would be.