Well, my summer hiatus turned out to be not so much of a hiatus after all! Instead of focusing on programming languages, reading, relaxing and learning Japanese, I ended up getting frustrated at my programming languages learning (Yeah, I got stuck on a chapter, but I’ve got it down now) and wound up writing up a massive stack of on-paper notes for my Hades’ Boys paranormal romance / urban fantasy series onto my computer.
I’m really glad that I’ve been able to use some time to type them up though. I’ve been typing them now for a few weeks and I’ve amassed a rather frightening amount of words on screen. There are seven brothers, so seven books, and so far I’ve typed out 45,801 words in eight documents (one is a general notes document). I obviously have more notes for the earlier books in the series, as I’ll probably have to write at least the first three before fleshing out the remaining four. I also have more notes to write up, especially for the general notes document. And character bios to type up too.
I’d love to get these written, but, at the moment, I need to focus on building a bunch of releases that will cover me whilst I’m writing these stories. I want to write them all together, so my flow remains constant and I’m in the world and the characters. I don’t want to have to break into them by writing novellas and other stories, or editing during my writing phase for them. I suppose it’s all down to how much time it’ll take me to write them. The last thing I want to do is to release the first one without writing the rest. I don’t want to end up not finishing the series.
I’m thinking they’ll all be around the 100,000 word mark, which feels about right to me for this sort of story. Writing a 100,000 word story in first draft, when I have it planned quite well, usually takes me around four or five weeks. I write fast. Of course, that depends on any interruptions that might crop up. I never write when I’d have to break off to go on holiday (oh, what a shame! I need a good holiday…) or have other things pressing on me. If I had a straight run at these seven stories, and take into account a couple of weeks of planning time for each novel, and the maximum five weeks per novel to write… that’s 7 x 7 weeks… 49 weeks. Eep! A year then basically. Hopefully, I would get them done quicker than that. Even then, I would end up with a massive stack of editing to wade through the year after. Grr.
Maybe I’ll have to switch between writing the first drafts and editing the earlier stories to keep the ball moving.
At the moment, I have a decent amount of releases to cover next year, but I have other stories I want to write in that time. More about that later though!
Ja ne! (later!)
