Who is finished withe the first draft of his novel? I AM FINISHED with the first draft of my novel!

Total word count is 108,797. The battle between Seth and Cy nearly doubled my average word count per chapter. I was told Seth used too much non-black magic in the short story so I have rectified that.

Woo hoo! I don't have to give up writing!

Now, I'm going to read a book or three then I'm going to start on the revision. Now the hard work begins.

I have a couple paragraphs left in the battle scene outside Weck-n-Wings. Following that, I have 5-7 chapters remaining and then I'm done. Total manuscript length will clock in around (probably just under) 110,000 words for the first draft. The chapter I skipped (chapter 51, a flashback to when Christian has kidnapped Matty and forces Cy to steal the Middlesex Chalice from the Tower of London) is 99% going to be cut. I lamented at the time that I thought the story was getting bogged down in flashbacks and that was the chapter that made me feel that way. Other than cementing the relationship between the three Speakers, it doesn't have a lot of value and I can do the same, more slowly and interspersed, in other chapters.

As part of a meme, I went back and picked a word from an early chapter (page 134 of the manuscript, around word 21,000). Holy crap is there a lot of work to do once this thing is done! Revision, revision, revision! I hope I don't have to revise so much that I break the story and can't finish it (which is what happened when I tried to revise the original short story).

Get excited! Best estimate, this baby publishes next autumn. I know that's optimistic, but dammit, I want to be optimistic right now.