book 18 first draft done, 84k words

 book 18 first draft done, 84k words. on solid writing days I was writing round 10-12k words per day which is insanely ambitious. Tons of positive energy in chat is what kept that going.

Thanks everyone for the awesome outpouring. this book isn't too big or too small, it's just right! It might get a tiny bit bigger as I do a second draft, but I'm very happy with it. Tells 18 great stories. 

I wish i could have done more, but this timing is perfect. I got 16 stories done a bit ahead of time, and had time to squeeze in two more. It'll take about two weeks'ish to do a second draft and if there isnt anything i glaringly missed and no compelling reasons to squeeze in more stories, I'm very happy with 18 stories for book #18. 

I initially wanted it to be huge, but then upon reviewing the timeline and the enormous amount of physical and mental effort it takes to write stories, I realized it would have taken probably a year or so. Ironically I had initially given myself an infinite amount of time, but upon the amazing response to developing book #18 I revised the timeline and realized I had less than two months.

Basically saw that Nov 2020 was getting close, which means things probably will get crazy Oct 2020 and saw that it was the beginning of Aug, which means to publish I need to be ready to publish around mid-Sept. So that's how the timeline worked. 

So basically, the outpouring was amazing! 

Then several of the stories I planned lacked at least one of the three qualities I need to efficiently write a story which is 1) a compelling character and location, 2) something neat for them to do, 3) something that accomplishes.

If I had only 1 of those things, I didn't have time to turn it into a story, it ends up feeling too forced and takes way too long so I shelf the character+location for later. That's initially why I gave myself an infinite amount of time but again realized too that I had a lot of positive energy from the community and had a time limit I hadn't previously thought about if I wanted there to be a decent soft end to the story.

So anyway I'll do my second draft, make sure I didn't forget anything huge, and try to catch a few more tiny details since I have hooks I can bounce around to. I've already worked in tons of neat tiny details for the attentive to catch.

Another huge shoutout to the massive outpouring of support. Specifically there are four (arguably possibly 5'ish) animal stories in this one, way more ambitious than I've ever done before and ya'll helped out supporting me as I wrote those. 

The biggest thing and it sounds silly, but helping me with naming characters. As soon as they have a name, they suddenly exist in my mind's eye and I can guide them through the story seamlessly. Ya'll massively helped me with the naming situations and it's way too many of you to list here, but you know who you are. I think probably half of my characters were named by the community which is massive when you're writing 20+ characters and naming normally is extremely arduous. 

Okay I'm rambling. Thanks all, I'll do another blog as soon as book 18 is ready to publish.