Woohoo! I can officially say that I have completed the first draft of my sequel to Gluttony! I started this draft on July 1st, 2010 and literally just wrapped it up moments ago. The first draft is just a smidge under 86,000 words and I know for a fact that I chopped at least 12,000 words out. All together, I'm very pleased with how this sequel turned out. This sure beats the three years it took me to get my first book, that is still in the dresser drawer, done!
So, now onto the fun part. Revising, or editing, or re-writing, whatever you want to call it. The idea would be to have it ready to go to Carolyn by the end of October and hopefully sooner, like have it ready for the Surrey International Writers Conference.
While this is all good there is a little kernel of concern sprouting in my head. What I'm worried about is, is this a fast enough turn around? I think its fast, but I'm far from a professional at this point in my career. Anyone got any ideas on what the industry standard is as to how fast we should be getting our sequels done as a debut author? I've seen a few authors mention how long it takes them, but they are writing short stories, something in the 55,000 word range and I don't think that is a fair standard when I'm writing something twice the size when its all said and done.
Let me what you think folks. Whether it's your opinion, experience or something you've read, I'd love to know what you think about the speed of getting a rough draft done.
2 comments:
Part of it depends on genre. Romance novelists pump out stories much more frequently than epic fantasists.
In general, publishers seem to be pushing authors to a novel per year kind of cycle. Whether that actually happens, George Martin's next novel is notoriously overdue. It was supposed to be published five years ago or some such and he's still not done with it.
From what I've seen, everyone writes their sequels pretty much at their own pace. But the pace is always quicker than it was for the first novel represented by their agents. So I'd say you're right on track.
So long as you can keep whatever deadline the publisher will eventually set for you, it doesn't really matter how long it takes you to write the thing. I'd say 2 months for 86,000 words is plum perfect (coming from someone who pulled 113,000 in 3).
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