Early this morning, I reached the 80 000 word mark in the first draft of my novel, Big Ledge. By some accounts this is the ideal length for a novel, a first novel, anyway. If you become a commercial success, you can make your novels any length you like...
I'm not finished the first draft--there may be as many as twenty thousand more words to come--but the end is in definitely in sight, the task seems possible. And with the shrinkage that will naturally come after editing, eighty thousand words may indeed be close to the final count.
It's a good place to be, better than almost exactly one year before when I started on the first chapter. Will there be enough material for a novel, I asked then? Can I sustain it? Can I map out a reasonable plot? Can I maintain the interest of readers and my own interest, for that matter? Well, I'm committed now... Of course most writers SHOULD be "committed".
FYI. Big Ledge is NOT a story about the life of birds (although birds do appear in it: chickadees, jays and ravens to mention a few...)
For more about the Big Ledge project...
I'm not finished the first draft--there may be as many as twenty thousand more words to come--but the end is in definitely in sight, the task seems possible. And with the shrinkage that will naturally come after editing, eighty thousand words may indeed be close to the final count.
It's a good place to be, better than almost exactly one year before when I started on the first chapter. Will there be enough material for a novel, I asked then? Can I sustain it? Can I map out a reasonable plot? Can I maintain the interest of readers and my own interest, for that matter? Well, I'm committed now... Of course most writers SHOULD be "committed".
FYI. Big Ledge is NOT a story about the life of birds (although birds do appear in it: chickadees, jays and ravens to mention a few...)
For more about the Big Ledge project...
