Man, it turns out writing a book in less than seven years is really hard work and takes quite a bit of time each day. Not seven years, of course, but quite a few hours every day if you want to deliver it in less than seven years
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I’ve set myself the goal of getting the next Axis of Time book out by mid-November, and the one after that, World War 3.4, sometime in January. That’s a hell of a thing, after I faffed around with World War 3.1 for—yes—seven fucking years. But I’ve tweaked my workflows a bit in the meantime, and the new dictation gear I’ve been using has been fantastic.
I generally come home from walking the dogs in the morning—which takes about two hours—with 3,000 words already drafted. They take most of the morning to edit, and then I sit in my comfy office chair at lunch and dictate another chapter, which I spend the afternoon editing. So my daily word rate has gone from, well, frankly, such an abysmally low rate that I’m ashamed to even admit it here, up to an average of anywhere between four to six thousand words a day.
At that speed, yeah, I can get the book written really quickly. The writing is fast, it’s the editing that’s slow. Well, maybe I should say the composition or the dictation is fast, because the editing is the writing. It takes the huge pile of word vomit I spew into the dictation app—which very kindly cleans up all my ums and ahs and ridiculous meandering sentences—and turns it into something usable. But what comes out is still pretty rough.
Long story short, though, I’m determined to just keep smashing these things out until this series is done, probably late next year with World War 3.8 or 3.9. Partly it’s because I don’t think my publishers in the U.S. are going to get The Forever Dead into the market before 2026. Having waited nearly 18 months for them to get the edit on the first draft back to me, it’s now been six or seven months since I turned in the second draft, and I’ve heard nothing. Nada. Crickets and tumbleweeds.
So, in a perverse, and I’ll admit quite petty, way, I’ve set myself the task of writing what will probably end up being about a million words by the end of next year. That’s before they publish the single-hundred-thousand-word novel I sent them two years ago.
So, long story short, that’s why I haven’t been blogging much, because it turns out it just distracts me from getting these books done. It’s a pity, because I find writing here a lot more relaxing than doing actual work.