“The bad news is time flies. The good news is,.. you’re the pilot”
Michael Atshuler
Well,… it appears I’m approaching the 3 year mark of working on my first novel “Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.” which isn’t a milestone I was looking for. True, my second draft and proofreading process is getting closer to completion, but this is much longer than I’d anticipated to finish this project. Yes,.. I do write part time, and do have periods where I’m not actively working on the project, so that’s likely the main culprit, but there’s another problem too.
The process of the first novel took so long that my idea for the second novel got me interested in diverting some time to that. So here I stand with one novel approaching the finish line and the second novel outline about a third done.
But three years is far too long. I’m motivated to complete this so I don’t go over this period by very long at all. I’m about 166 pages away from completing the second draft and then must decide if I’m ready for self-publishing while looking to obtain an agent, or do I go to the expense of hiring a professional proofreader. While I’ve tried to be very careful on the 2nd draft to find any typos and grammatical errors, I’ve no doubt probably missed some things. Spell Check and Grammar check have helped as well, but I’m not sure if I should risk putting out the book when there still might be issues. But the old term, “analysis paralysis” comes to mind and I’m feeling I’m more likely to run with what I’ve produced than to come up with another excuse not to publish yet.
Being my first novel, it’s highly unlikely to be perfect anyway, but I think I’ve gotten it to a point that I feel good about it, so I think it’s time to soon give birth to my book. I hope I did my job well, but only time will tell. I’ll be praying strongly that I’ve written a book that people will enjoy and honors my faith as well. Hopefully my next post will be not too long after September 9th, 2016, which will be exactly 3 years since I started this journey. “Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.” needs to become a novel. Stay tuned.
“Burt’s Bots” Novel progress at Camp NaNoWriMo:
Outline: 17.816 words
Novel 1st Draft: 13,367 (Went back to outlining 1st though)
“Inheriting S.O.F.I.A.” Novel Progress:
1st Draft Novel: 78,198 words
2nd Draft Novel Rewrite: Up to page #213 of 351