August 17th – 691,338

Despite hitting 3,405 words today, I’ve realised I have an immense problem with this current work in progress. I’m about 10-15k from the finish, depending on how the mood takes me, and I’m going to finish it before I start the major rewrite. That’s right, a major re-write.

This is book three of a trilogy, and when it’s finished the whole trilogy will span over 250k words. Last night I realised why I was finding the narrative passages a little clunky, and a little stilted, even though the story and dialogue was flowing extremely well. Books one and two were written in the first person, and for some reason I can’t explain I’ve written this book so far in the third person! Since I write almost everything I do in the third person, this trilogy being the only exception this year – I guess it’s an understandable mistake. But, and it’s a big but, before starting this third book, I deliberately did an edit pass through books one and two – so I knew they were in first person but ignored that fact.

Have you ever tried to rework an entire book from third to first person? Arrgh! It’s insane, but I’ve got no choice, it’s got to be done.

I’ve decided to finish the book as it is, first, that might make for fractionally more work later on, but this way I’m not working on the same story from both ends, changing it to first person as I go through the first chapters, and still writing the final ones. Besides, as I edit I’m sure to find sentences that need rewriting for other reasons, or even sections that will get chopped – and all those edits will drastically change my word count for the piece. That would throw a lot of confusion on the word count for my challenge, so I’d rather keep that pure, and finish the book, then use my edit time to correct it. Damn, is it ever going to be hard work!

Ah well, who ever said the life of a writer was easy? Whoever said it was lying through their teeth with their fingers crossed behind their backs!