You Wrote a Book, Eh? How Soon Till You Become a Millionaire?

Oh, after I finish revising it, probably. Like, twenty years after.

I just finished the second draft of the renamed The Roar of the Spheres. I’m trying a new process this time: in the second draft, I fill it out. I expand the scenes that were rushed, slip in any missing back story and worldbuilding, replace scenes that don’t accomplish what I want them to, and patch up any holes in the story’s logic. That’s what I just wrapped up. I ended up inserting about 2200 new words. I don’t know how many I replaced/rewrote, but it’s probably in the same ballpark.

In the third draft, I intend to take things out. There’ll be some overlap with the replace/rewrite aspect of the second draft, in that I intend to take out the bad sentences and replace them with good ones, but the chief focus will be on trimming every excess word I can.

If I can cut 10 words per page–hardly a taxing task–that’ll bring the manuscript back down to 100,000 words. That’ll only be about a 3% decrease, in fact. If I can manage 5 or 6%, I’ll be extremely satisfied.