Here’s where we stand:<\/p>\n
Eleven chapters have been posted to the web. No money has been contributed toward Chapter Twelve; in fact, I’m still $2.00 short for Chapter Eleven.<\/p>\n
Fourteen chapters have been e-mailed to donors.<\/p>\n
I’ve finished writing Chapter Fifteen, and just started Chapter Sixteen.<\/p>\n
However, at the end of Chapter Fifteen Carlisle Hsing figured out a big chunk of the mystery — she had to, if I didn’t want her to look stupid — and now I’m thinking I could maybe wrap this up in about eighteen to twenty chapters, rather than the twenty-five I’d previously estimated. That would make for a pretty short novel, though of course it would get longer in rewrite.<\/p>\n
I know a lot of authors cut stuff in rewrite, but I almost never do; instead I fill in details I’d skipped over. It’s not unusual for me to add as much as 25,000 words to a 100,000-word novel.<\/p>\n
In this case, the first draft might come in as short as 55,000 words — about the length of a typical Ace Double, nowhere near the modern norm.<\/p>\n
The up side is that it would be done sooner; the down side is that I’d feel as if I was cheating folks who paid $25.00 for a book that short. If it comes to that, I’ll want to think of some way to make up the difference for donors.<\/p>\n
Not to mention whatever standards FoxAcre Press may have; I haven’t yet discussed the matter there.<\/p>\n
But of course, it may not come to that at all; I’ve grossly misjudged how long a story needs to be before. The folk-tales in Among the Powers<\/i> were originally added because the novel was below Avon’s minimum length, and Dragon Weather<\/i> ran 20,000 words longer than I’d intended.<\/p>\n
So I’m going to keep writing it, and see what happens. If it comes out too short, well… the first draft may turn out to not be the entire story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s where we stand: Eleven chapters have been posted to the web. No money has been contributed toward Chapter Twelve; in fact, I’m still $2.00 short for Chapter Eleven. Fourteen chapters have been e-mailed to donors. I’ve finished writing Chapter Fifteen, and just started Chapter Sixteen. However, at the end of Chapter Fifteen Carlisle Hsing… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-progress-reports","category-realms-of-light"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":438,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethshar.com\/serials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}