Finished first draft of “Where Magic Reigns”

I thought I wouldn’t make it by the end of the month, but today I finished the first draft of Where Magic Reigns, the sequel to my young adult action adventure, The Elemental Odyssey.

July was my marathon writing month. On July 1^st, the manuscript was at 36,702 words. Today I finished the first draft at 86,043 words. That means I wrote over 52,000 words in one month, a significant record for me, especially since I had my 40+ hour/week technical writing job at the same time.

I spent 42 hours writing over the month, so an average of 1,192 words per hour.  My best hourly rate was 1,557 words.

Of course, the story is in a state that I like to call the “ugly first draft.” Not something I want anyone else to read, that’s for sure. My first drafts are always like that because I have to get the story done, not done perfect. I find that if I struggle over every word and phrase in the first draft I'll never get the first draft done. Therefore, I try to power through, concentrating only on plot and information. In subsequent drafts I'll fix up the all sorts of things. I have over 100 comments in it, each one requiring some kind of change or specific improvement to a word, passage, or plot point.

For The Elemental Odyssey, it took me 120 hours to do the 2^nd through 7^th drafts, which went to the editor.

My next goal is to hand off Where Magic Reigns to the editor in October. That’ll be a stretch, but I’m hoping I can get it done.