Today, marks a HUGE accomplishment for me. It’s been years (YEARS!) since I put out a novel. My last new book release was Alien Mate Experiment writing as Zenobia Renquist. The last new-NEW release (not re-release of a previously published title) writing as DRB was in 2013. YEARS!
While I would love this to be a post about how a new book is coming soon. It is not. Sorry about that.
However…
This post is about me finishing a novel. Today. 100K words written since 01 Jan 2022. A total of 157K words. Book 1 in the new dragon trilogy — Yolette: Cursed Dragon’s Bride — is now COMPLETE!
Yolette? That sounds familiar, right?
If you read Favored Dragon’s Release, then that name should sound very familiar because it was the name of the heroine. Yolette: Cursed Dragon’s Bride is a re-imagined, retelling of that story. Same main characters, same basic plot, but wildly overhauled, which made it much longer. Rather than tweak scenes in Favored Dragon’s Release and try to make the trilogy fit around it, I started over (almost) from scratch and re-wrote the entire thing to fit the new vision of the trilogy I had in mind.
It was slow going and stopped dead at one point because I burnt out trying to write as quickly as possible, putting away a 3K word chapter a day for over a week. Since I couldn’t keep up that momentum, I just avoided the story while guilting myself for not writing on it.
At the end of 2021, I discovered and adopted the Terry Pratchett method of writing 400 words per day. Except, I lowered my goal to 200 words per day. The point of it is to write every day, no matter what. I wanted to make my goal something I could accomplish even when I was feeling shitty and the words weren’t flowing.
Adopting this method was a way to give myself permission to write a little and not feel guilty that I didn’t write more. Before I would sit and write until my vision blurred and I was starving with a splitting headache from skipping meals. That’s no way to do things. That’s also why I burnt out. That method wasn’t sustainable in the least. The Terry Pratchett method is sustainable, and it allows me to step away from the computer to do other things, like eat and clean.
I can already hear you saying 200 words per day since 01 Jan should be way less than 100K words. Yeah, it is. But that happened because a lot of days I went over the daily goal. Way over. The daily goal is just a minimum to keep me writing. It also helped me push through stubborn scenes so I could get to those scenes that just flowed.
As a result, Book 1 of the Dragons’ Brides Trilogy is complete and in the bag. As I already said, this post isn’t to announce a coming soon date. I’ve decided to complete the trilogy before publishing it. At my current writing speed, that could be another year away. Maybe another year and half. I’m not rushing, because I want to tell these stories right. Also, because I don’t want to burn out.
Next up in my writing queue is Deyani: Shunned Dragon’s Bride. Keep an eye on my Facebook Page — D. Renee Bagby – Author — for word count updates to track my progress.