draft four almost 25% done; some statistics

the timeline so far:

• 01 Jan 2011: started draft 1. Expected it to be 120,000 words
• 24 Aug 2011: finished draft 1. 235 days. 169,429 words. 720 words per day.
• break (130 days)
• 01 Jan 2012: started draft 2.
• 03 Aug 2012: finished draft 2. 215 days. 210,000 words. 976 words per day.
• 04 Aug 2012: started draft 3.
• 20 Dec 2012: finished draft 3. 139 days. 274,594 words. 1,975 words per day.
• break (87 days)
• 17 Mar 2013: started draft 4
• 29 May 2013: today. Draft is 22.3% done

As of right now the novels are at 291,266 words.

Some computed statistics:

• added 16,672 words so far in this draft
• … which means I expect to add 74,762 words total
• … which means that the novels should reach around 350,000 words
• i.e. somewhere between 1,000 and 1,400 pages
• At this rate, the expected completion date is around 27 December 2013
• At this rate, the expected project length is 273 days
• I’ve revising 1,282 words per day

Some color commentary:

My daily word rate has dropped a tad from draft 3, but draft 3 was an insane sprint when I thought that the end was in sight. It was also a sprint being performed on a noticeably shorter work.

Even though the break from Christmas to this spring felt like a long time, it wasn’t quite three months.

I’d really been hoping to finish up by 1 October so that I could launch a kickstarter mid-month and ship books for Christmas…but it’s not to be. This story is huger than I had any conception of, and it demands to be done well. The fourth draft needs to be done, and then there might even be a fifth draft.

So.

Screw the “books ship by 31 December 2013” deadline.

I might not finish draft 5 of this thing until October of NEXT year.

Books ship by 31 December 2014. Yes. FOURTEEN.

(fingers crossed)