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Writing Log #24 - 2nd draft DONE & road to release

Added 2025-10-01 11:45:44 +0000 UTC

Pictured above, a shockingly real scene from chapter 3. Following up a big month with another one! Things are happening!

Chapter 1: Final manuscript (5,377 words) ✅️

When writing is done, I still need to fine-tune it and make sure things such as ellipses and other little formatting things are consistent. This is also the time for any last-minute edits, which I'm never immune to, and it's the kind of nitpicky nightmare I love being in charge of. This is it. It's out of my hands now. (Not really, but also really.)

For some reason, Scrivener and LibreOffice are giving me different word counts. It's only a 12 word difference, but I thought that was funny. Libre's dictionary has been a bit of a head scratcher; maybe it's confused by some of my creative liberties.

Chapter 5: Second draft (16,037 words) ✅️
Chapter 6: Second draft (6,299 words) ✅️

And that's all the chapters in at least second draft form! Shocked I managed both of those in a month. I was late-night writing the final scene of chapter 6 in bed just yesterday when my cat Sunny decided it would be great to go take a nap on my chest. I still finished writing it anyway and he was hilariously unbothered by it.

Anyway, these chapters will need a lot of editing work, but that's what this month is for. It's all editing and it needs to be done. Someone else will be handling the PDF and EPUB formatting, so I'd better deliver these files on time - and then in November, boy howdy, it's art time. A LOT of art time. These illustrations are chonkers, and I want them to look nice :)

Other than that, wonderful artists for the release countdown project have been paid, things like setting up websites and newsletters are being looked into, a bunch of the usual admin work is happening - but the highest priority is the book itself. I want it out before the holidays so we can all get cozy and read. But not me. I've been obsessively re-reading it for so long I'll need other people to take over when it's done lol