johnvano.com: The Book: A New Milestone

Yay, for me. My wife was kind enough to let me stop at my favorite Starbucks on Friday for an hour or so between my day job and my evening commitment... in that time I was able to complete version 2.0 of my novel... now officially a 4-year venture.

I keep a writing journal to help me track time, ideas, struggles and such. Here's what I wrote tonight after completing this current stage:

"Just for the record: It’s 6:43 pm and I have just put the final sentence down! Yeah, baby! I like. After skimming over the last couple paragraphs, I’m surprised that what I just wrote is so short… I hope the reader can take in the scene and feel what I’m feeling. Will find out from my first readers, I hope. But realize now that I’ve used the word “baritone” about 4x in the manuscript. Once is enough. Will have to fix later."

But it's not done yet. I need to print the thing and give it a good read without the benefit of a computer where I meticulously rewrite and adjust sentences. Now I need to read it for the big picture. Paula will begin reading it for me, and just a friend or two until I'm sure it's ready for more readers.

I found this interesting: At the conclusion of the audio book, A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer, there was a brief author interview in which Archer states that he works January - February on his first drafts. Beginning a series of two hour writing sessions at 6 am and alternating with two hour breaks, until he finishes writing at 8 pm and hits the hay about 9:30 pm. It takes him about 330 hours over 45 days (6 weeks) to complete this. A Prisoner of Birth, for example, wasn't completed until 17 drafts had been developed. Ouch. And yet, I understand.