Reaching a Checkpoint

Today I reached what I thought was a milestone in my journey to publishing my first novel, only to find out it’s just a check point.

I've been working on my first novel for a few years now, tweaking it sporadically while I mainly focused on meeting magazine deadlines. Most of the time I've worked on the manuscript, I've been “perfecting” the Prologue rather than actually finishing the first draft. More than one published author has told me how foolish that is. One published author told me in 2013 that I need to know how the novel ends before I can find out how it begins. (Wrap your head around THAT!) Last November, another published author explained to me that if writing a novel is like baking cookies, the first draft is like putting all the ingredients onto the table. Once I've got all the ingredients out and the oven has been turned on, then I can start to mix the ingredients to make the cookies.

Today, I triumphantly raised both hands in the air, believing that I had finished the first draft of my first-ever novel manuscript!

My novel, the first in the Nova Chronicles series, is called A Reason to Run. It’s about a young man who lives on the planet of Elba, as part of a society divided into clans. Elba’s orbit around its star is such that the planet is habitable for three years at a time, followed by a fatally cold and uninhabitable year of winter. While the protagonist, Errol Nova, and his sister live under tyrannical rule, the theme of the novel is more about how family trumps society.

Once I reached a satisfactory climax and denouement today, my novel clocked in at 46,246 words. However, as I did some research on novel length, I found that, yes, it’s technically long enough to be considered a “novel” rather than a “novella,” but it’s more stranded between the two. It’s like in a game of Clue when you roll the dice and exit one room, having successfully pinpointed the right suspect, room, and weapon—you just need to get to the right room—but because luck wasn't a lady you’re now stuck on a square in the void where you can’t do anything but watch helplessly as your sister enters the Hall and solves the game.

In other words, the typical length of an adult novel is more like 80,000 to 90,000 words, and fantasy novels can be over 100,000 words without being considered too long. Going back to the analogy of the cookies, I've only got half of the ingredients out on the table. I guess I’d better turn off the oven.

At any rate, what I've finished writing today will be considered “Part I,” whether it’s published as a stand-alone, teaser novel or is the first half of a much larger, complete novel. That means I've got a lot of work to do revising Part I. I already know the direction I’m going to take with Part II, I just need to find where those ingredients are stashed.

Stay tuned, Elbers.