Four months, 108,000 words, 368 pages: The end is in sight

The end is in sight. I am approaching the end of my book, so I decided to go back and do a little assessment of how much I’ve written so far.

After about four months, I’ve written 108,612 words, or 368 pages (12-point, double-spaced).

My target was 96,000 words, 320 pages, so I’ve surpassed my goal, and that allows me ample room to do some healthy editing.

I’ll feel very comfortable going back and deleting entire sections and paring down bulky language. One of my biggest fears in all of this was that I was going to be constantly revising along the way, never happy with how my writing turned out on the previous day, and that I would just be constantly rewriting what I had just written. For whatever reason, I was able to simply plow ahead, knowing at times that what I had written the previous day was not all that great.

I’ve already started the revision process from the beginning, and along the way I’ve been reminded of some stories that I had forgotten about. So I will be going back and adding in some of those tales as I pare down and polish what I’ve already written.

As it is, I probably have just a week or so left of putting the ending on my book and wrapping the whole thing up. All in all, it has turned out just about how I planned.

The process has gone about as well as I could have expected. I knew going into it that one chapter every two weeks, without fail, was an ambitious goal, and here I am about a month past my deadline. Still, though, I’m pretty pleased with writing 108,000 words in four months.

It can be done.

Now, since I have spent more of my professional career as an editor than as a writer, I am very much looking forward to the editing process. Onward.