I finished the first draft of my Lake Proper novella today! I wrote 1,274 words over two scenes today, bringing the whole thing to a close at 25,310 words. A great novella length, if I do say so myself.
@RedMage
Congratulations! 25,310 sounds like a very satisfying length for a novella, especially after the long scene you were wrestling with the other weekend.
I’m in a less measurable phase at the moment. Rather than adding lots of new words, I’ve been going back through existing material, tightening structure, checking continuity and deciding what actually needs to stay. It never looks as impressive in a word-count update, but sometimes removing or reorganizing something feels like more progress than adding another thousand words.
I’m curious how much distance you usually give yourself before starting the first full read-through. Do you go straight back in, or let the draft sit for a while first?
Editing and revising are difficult phases in which to track word count changes. I've heard that lament from so many writers, and I've often expressed it myself, lol. They're a vital stage though, unless you're only writing for yourself (which is totally okay!).
I've chosen to dive right into a first round of edits. I wrote this with the plan for a series of novellas, and this is the third in the series as I have ideas for two earlier stories. My preference is to start writing at the beginning and work through to the end, and I attempted to do that here. However, I struggled with developing the earliest idea (I now have a better concept, but it's been sitting by the wayside for a bit while I worked on this third story). That said, I have placeholders, information on characters and locations--from towns to the MCs' favorite restaurants--and other elements that I explored for the first time in writing this third story but which, ultimately, belong in the earlier stories. The reason I wrote this one first is that it popped fully formed into my head and I had to create the others after deciding the characters had more story to them.
Thanks for asking @RolandsFarblood! It's been my plan to post this novella for critique--and I think I will still do that--but your question has encouraged me to consider largely setting this aside and turn toward writing those two earlier story ideas (which have become much more developed while I wrote this third story).
