SCC5 Zero Draft is done!
I did not finish drafting in March as I hoped, but I did finish drafting the first week of April! That’s why I didn’t post in March. For about a two week stretch there, I kept thinking I was one more day away of finishing up, but those last two chapters kept going and going. It took a bit to wrap up an entire series.
The zero draft came in a little over 90k which is about 20% longer than the longest book so far in the series. It’s a huge relief to finally have it done. And I’ve already done the reading for the first full book editing pass. It went way smoother than I dared to hope. All that editing along the way really paid off.
My target is to finish up the first draft in the next week and a tightening phase before the end of the month and then let it sit for awhile while I wrap up some other smaller projects as a palate cleanser. I’m hoping to fire up the gears of publishing by mid-June and have it out in the wild by the end of summer or early autumn.
Then what? I don’t know to be honest. I’ve been playing with the idea of taking a break for a bit. There’s a backlog of video games I’d like to play and there’s some data analysis projects I’ve been wanting to do but don’t have time for. But writing’s an addiction that’s hard to shake. I can see telling myself I’m taking a break while also starting to research book 2 of the MK series and then creating an outline and then starting drafting. So, who knows.
For now, it feels good to have the zero draft and almost the first draft done. I’m excited to polish it up and get it out there in the world.