Volume Eight Status Update

Loyal blog readers (and those just passing through), I have an exciting announcement: I have FINISHED THE FIRST DRAFT OF JOEL SUZUKI, VOLUME EIGHT!

If you recall the last Volume Eight Status Update post from March 5, at that time I was at 25,000 words. Since then, I've added another 50,000 words, reaching my target of 75,000 total, roughly equivalent to 300 pages. This means that I've completed a full draft in three months, which breaks my previous record of four months that I set with Volume One. I also set a single-day word count record of 2,500, breaking the previous record of 2,000.

As I mentioned in the last update post, a lot of the credit goes to a certain social media platform that shall remain unnamed, which gave me an incentive to write every day (including weekends, which I had never done before) and to write more each day than I thought I would (or that I was in the mood for). Also, I pantsed (i.e., wrote from the top of my head without using an outline) my way through the entire thing, which was also new for me.

So, now what? Well, I will probably take a break (or possibly move on to writing something else since I've been enjoying writing every day) and let the draft cool off for a bit, and then return to it later. I already know that large parts of it need tons of revising, editing, and rewriting, which is always the next step in the process. In other words, we're a long way off from launching a new installment of the Joel Suzuki series into the world, but who knows? Maybe the process, like the writing of the first draft, will take less time than usual.

Stay tuned!