Over the past weekend I finished the first draft of Devon’s Blade. This book had a few firsts for me. It was the first novella that I wrote in first person. It was the first long form writing I’ve done in Google Docs and it was the first time I have written live to a select group of alpha readers.
It took me around 58 days to complete this draft. I didn’t write every day during that time but when I did write I averaged over 1000 words a day. The final word count was: 42,842 and the page count 181. So it’s officially a novella, being less than the 50K words required of a novel.
Using Google Docs was not unpleasant and I have to say, I’d do it again if needed. I wrote each chapter in a separate file and then merged them as I got going into a single file. The only slowdown I noticed was doing a word count on the finished, combined document takes a few minutes for the Google to calculate. But loading, writing and editing all happened as quickly as with a word processor.
Writing live for an audience of about five people turned out to be a bust. I think that unless you are really into watching someone write, you probably don’t have the time to keep up with a writer’s ability to crank out words. I don’t see any advantage to doing that again. I think doing a first draft in private is still preferred for me. Keeps me focused and in the zone.
This is the last Star Saga book I will be writing for at least a year, so that was bitter sweet. I need to hang up the writing spurs and slip into the editor/publisher boots for the remainder of this year.