Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

93,916 words later.

The draft of my novel is complete and today, I am taking a moment to celebrate! I set myself the target of writing it in November and I achieved my target! I am very happy and a touch proud.

Admittedly, the last few chapters were hard to write. Not because I lacked the idea of what was going to be in them, but generally suffering from an angst that I was so close to the end. I’m sure it must be like running a marathon (or any long race) and seeing the finish line in sight, and yet those final yards/metres feel like they are the toughest.

Of course, there is a long way to go between a completed first draft and an edited ready-for-publication draft. I have a short list of things which I noted as I was going along that I know need revision or rethinking. For instance, I had a character set-up to be there in the dramatic finale, only for me to write the scene and decide that it already had enough people in it without adding them too.  I’ll start the editing at the end of December with the hopes that I will have a completed second draft ready for the beginning of January.

A friend of mine has offered to do the copy edit which I’ve greatly appreciated as, even with the best will in the world, I go blind to typos and incorrect word substitutions after editing a couple of times, and sometimes Word doesn’t spot the problem. I had looked into a professional copy editor, but unsurprisingly the really good ones are very expensive! I doubt very much I’d make a profit if I used one. Luckily my friend is an academic who has been published himself and has performed as a copy editor for other academicians. His payment is likely to be a theatre trip at some point in the future when I can afford it.

Beyond that, I will have to sort a book cover. While it is tempting to use AI (some of the pictures on the website are done with Canva AI currently), I would prefer to use an actual book artist for the cover. I may be hitting up something like Fiverr shortly!

All very exciting, and this is the furthest along I’ve ever gotten to my goal of novel publication since those past rejections.

I will also have to think about the marketing and launch of the book. In some ways, the short stories I’ve published with the characters are the beginning of that as hopefully some of the views are people reading and not just clicking and wandering away when they see it’s an original piece. But I definitely need to think about whether I want to ask some people to be official pre-readers who might also be willing to leave an Amazon or Good Reads review.

I really also need to think about digital marketing generally. I do use tumblr and I think a lot of people have found me here because they’ve followed a link from there. I have an Instagram account that I haven’t used. A Facebook page seems very old school these day as an author.

I had two abortive attempts at using Twitter before I just stopped years ago. I looked at Threads and decided not to join. I have recently joined BlueSky (I’m rachelfhundred.bsky.social over there), mostly because I figured if a lot of people were currently joining as the news reports, maybe it would be a place to start an account and see how it goes on their BookSky feed. So far, I’m just doing the 20 day book challenge (post a book cover every day for 20 days of books which have stayed with you) and haven’t posted anything else.  I’m hesitant about starting BookTok or BookTube…the problem is that the more social media there is, the more effort and time it takes to keep it up in addition to the writing.

I am proud that I’ve managed to get as many things done alongside the novel as it is. When I list everything out that I had managed to do, it turns out to be a lot! I have reflected that I can definitely skew my own perception of what I manage to do in addition to the writing and that I need to keep watch on that as I go forward.

I do still feel that I could balance things better. While I got a lot done, there is a lot sitting on my to-do list which I deprioritised for November – including the launch of my business website. It was a conscious decision to prioritise the writing over everything – this is my long term vision for what I want to do every day, but I am aware that the longer I officially delay launching my business, the longer I am not earning enough to pay the bills.

As I look at the last three months on this website, there has definitely been a downturn in views and visitors. I think there are a couple of contributing factors which I’ll get into when I do the quarterly review (which I am combining with a full annual view which I’ll post up around 19^th December which is the 1^st birthday for the website). However, this downturn does give me pause for the likelihood of making my writing a successful enterprise.

That said, the short story I posted in November, Hidden in Plain Sight, got a lot of love for an original story, so maybe I am overly worrying. I know it will take a while to make a living from my writing and I just need to breathe and remember to focus on the writing. And say a very big thank you to those who do donate, monthly or as a one-off to support my original writing! It means the world to me.

Certainly, it has helped give me the confidence to make the leap. So, with that said, what I really want to focus on today is the success of writing a full first draft of my novel, all 93,916 words of it. Woo hoo!

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