It's DONE

After nearly a whole year of writing, I'm overjoyed to announce that the first draft of STAND is finished. As you can see from the word count chart above (I do this for all of my books), there were ups and downs in the writing process, and at times weeks or even months would go by with little progress. But since February of this year, I was able to finally lock into a sustainable pace, and continued that pace up till now.

There is nothing like the feeling of completing a first draft. It's an exhilarating mix of accomplishment, excitement, and relief: accomplishment at having finished such a formidable project, excitement at the prospect of being able to share it soon with the world, and relief for not  giving up mid-way!

And now comes the fun part–editing! It may sound strange to say that this is my favorite part, but it truly is. When I'm writing the first draft, I resist the urge to go back and read previous sections of the story. In fact, except for going back to double-check facts, I try not to look at what I've written at all. This can be a hard urge to resist, but I feel it's important to keep the writing momentum going. Editing the first draft is for me an opportunity to read the completed story for the first time–I can actually enjoy the book as a new reader would. And because, at this point, so much of the writing was done months prior, I've forgotten much of it myself. This helps me judge the beats of the story objectively; if certain character arcs aren't working or if the dialogue is clunky, this is where I'll often catch it.

Once my editing work is done, the book is formatted and sent out to my small team of editors and proofreaders. They are invaluable in catching errors, inconsistencies, and typos that I missed. Many readers have written in asking why All Things New and The Unrighteous don't feel as polished as the later books, and a lack of editors is the reason. With those first two books it was just me doing everything, but with later books I've always relied on outside sets of eyes to help proofread, and it really shows.

As I've said previously, the book will be released sometime next month, in August. So please stay tuned and enjoy your regional conventions!