Work Out of Progress - Update #6

I initially wrote the first draft of this article in the first few moments after finishing the first draft of G.J. and as such, the thoughts weren’t really cohesive in a way that was enjoyable to read. I’ll include a little blurb of what I’m talking about at the end of this much better worded and fully thought out post as a postscript. 

For those of you who read every word in a sentence, you might already know the subject matter that has triggered this post - the first draft of my soft sci-fi novel, codenamed G.J., is indeed complete. I wrote the last lines last Tuesday, March 31, 2026. My personal life then got very busy with preparations for Easter and a family visit, so I haven’t had much time to reflect as I’d like on what exactly that means in a way that would be enjoyable to read, so we’ll just hit the hard numbers, wax poetic about next steps, and get out of here. Let’s start.

Let’s Distract Ourselves with Some Numbers

It would be rude to just drop a graph on you, so here’s a brief bit of introduction before the graphic is so rudely shoved into your face. Alright, we’ve done this bit before, let’s get to it. 

Graph is good.

Part three took a little more to wrap up than I thought. ~36,000 words went into setting up and then unraveling the end of this book and as it stands, the ending feels sort of abrupt even given that. I’ll be the first to admit, I struggle with endings. They are the hardest part for me by far. Beginnings are much, much easier since you can always write more to help them out, but endings are where the writing stops. If I were a betting man, I’d put money on me spending the most time in the revision just on getting the ending right.

This puts the total word count for the book around 94k, which is the most I’ve ever written for a singular purpose before. 

And that’s kind of neat, right? 

Let’s hit you with some weird counts.

Number of times I used the word “the:” 7177 
Number of times the letter “e” occurred: 46246 
Number of times “said” occurred: 57
Number of times “says” occurs: 347 

This is fun, right? You’re enjoying this? I don’t know what to do now, so let’s get to the next bit:

What Now, Idiot?

Well, what comes next is what makes me feel so panicky, because now begins the hard part. Revision. Rewriting. Cleaning everything up so that it all makes sense and feels engineered while remaining seemingly effortless. I’m not sure how or when, but the next step will be to go through line by line and readdress it all. 

For some writers, this involves printing out the work. It might just be that’s what this writer does as well in this instance. Printing things out shifts the part of the brain that glosses over what it already knows. Removing the screen between me and the work is also a shift in what area of the brain is active. It’ll also make the thing feel real in a way that sometimes screens obfuscate. Printing out over 340 pages of a story might make the dizzy feeling go away.

Pictured: The Writing Process

Or it might make it worse. Either way, we go into revision now and make the work better. Make the work complete. Whole. Right now, it’s a complete thing but the complete thing is held together by a lack of sleep and a fervent desperation to reach the end of something. That end has been reached, so now we can start again with fresh eyes. Take the beast piece by piece and ensure the pieces belong to the same beast. 

That sort of thing. It’ll be a bit more nebulous as far as tracking progress goes, but I’ll be sure to keep you updated in the meantime. Between you and me, I will also be putting this work aside for at least a month to let the memories of writing it fade a bit. The philosophy behind this is that upon next I lay my weary eyes on it, they will be more akin to a reader than that of the writer of the piece and that sort of distance will provide some much needed perspective to identify areas hat do not work as well. I’m not sure why this last sentence is written like that, but it is, and thus we move on. Revision is for the novel, not for the blog post about the novel. 

Thanks

I wish to give anyone and everyone who has read even just a second or even just a word of this blog a thanks for reading. If you’ve let me know that you’ve read, thank you too. If you haven’t and wish to remain in the shadows, that’s cool, but know that I thank you. 

But really, just knowing that someone is out there reading even just the silly stuff I write is a huge motivation and a big reason why this book, that I wrote, exists at all. 

I’ll keep writing if you keep reading. That’s kind of how this works. So, thank you for reading. 

I’ll try not to let you down.

Or something. 

—

Post Script: The very bad first version of this post opened the following way:

It feels weird to be writing this on what felt like a random Tuesday in March, but today is the day that I finished the first draft of my soft sci-fi novel, codenamed G.J. 

Yes, the first draft of the book is done. I am no longer carrying around plot points in my head for G.J. It feels dizzy. I feel dizzy. It hasn’t sunk in yet that the draft is done, but maybe if I type it a few more times, I’ll start to get it.

The draft is done. 

I have a first draft of a novel. 

I wrote a novel. 

Maybe one of these will stick in my brain sometime soon, but right now? All I feel is panic.