Busy days

I have just finished a first draft of book no three in my Viking series. The first draft of the first book was about 56 000 thousand words when I finished it, this one is about 61 000 words now. The redrafted and so far final version of the first book ended up at about 76 000 words – I still don’t know on which word count this book no three will end. I have ideas about where in the story I need to put in more details and perhaps more scenes, I have ideas how relationships and people that the reader needs to get more information about. I didn’t know this when I was in the process of writing the book because I didn’t really have all the details on where it was going to end. I now have a ending, I’m not sure if this will be the ending in the final version, but for now it does seem like a good ending – but there are things happening in this final chapters that really truly calls for more insight into the different characters to believe that they will actually do the things they end up doing. Very cryptic I know, but as this is a first draft, I’m not really willing to share much of the story with anyone yet.

As always, when I type that final word and realize that I’ve actually sort of finished a new whole book, I get a feeling of emptiness. For a couple of moments it’s as if I don’t really know what to do next. I have of course big plans on what I’m going to do next: write book number two, and I’m very excited about that. I feel that this book number three is a good one, I’ve kept my writing style and the voice from book number one and I’m so eager to get to the stage where I can get someone else to read it to see if they can confirm my suspicions that this is also just as exciting a story as book number one. The problem now is that I can’t really show it to anyone before book number two is ready, so… Now I’m going to write a first draft of book number two, I guess I’ll be starting a little later today. And whilst I’m writing that first draft of book number two I might also occasionally take a break from that to do a bit of redrafting in book number three. Should really be an interesting process.

Exciting and busy days indeed.