True confession — I don’t outline my stories. I’m a true pantser. That means I write by the seat of my pants. I typically know where a story is headed, and I know a few scenes that will happen in the story, but beyond that, I discover the story as I write. This works well for me because it keeps the story exciting for me if I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.
However, this also means there are challenges. For example, I may be a bit off on my estimate of when a story will be done. That’s what’s happening now with After. When I began After I thought it would end up at about 60,000 words, which is just a bit shorter than Gone, which came in at 65,000 words. Based on that, and my daily word count output, I thought I’d be able to release it by the end of June. Well, as of today I’m at 63,000 words, and the story isn’t done being told.
I’ve adjusted my word count goal to 75,000 words, but to be honest it may be longer than that. I just don’t know yet! I’m working on this book everyday (and my daily output goal is 3000 words), and it’s going quite well, but I want it to be the best it can be, so I hope you’ll be patient with me. Once it’s done I’ll need to do revisions, then have it go through beta readers, then to my editor.
All in all, I’m confident that I’ll release After before the end of July, but I wanted to give you a head’s up that it will be delayed a bit. In the grand scheme of things, a few weeks won’t make a big difference, so I believe it’s worth it for me to take the time I need to get the story right. I hope you agree 🙂
~Christine
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