"A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it." —Samuel Johnson

Have you ever heard the following? "Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything." – Scott Adams It's a quote used frequently in business startup land.

I'm a big fan of setting up machines and then just feeding them, so they work. I look at writing with that same eye. What's my goal, and how can I set things up to focus on the fun part? 

I made a few gifts for friends and mailed them out in early December. I didn't know how they would go over but suspected they might be well received. Turns out everyone who received one absolutely loved it. All of the stories I write begin with a feeling that I want to convey. Back in the summer, I had a strong urge to write something to trigger a feeling called anemoia.

You know, I kind of expected a learning curve with eBook formatting. I set my mind to it and figured it out. No problem; just a bit of time. Setting up indie author accounts on Amazon and Google has been an enormous problem.

A lot is going on, well, all the time. I changed the website: a new highlights section on the home page, Absolution finally unveiled, and I reorganized some pages. Things are coming together nicely, as I'd hoped.

I've been working hard on the audiobook for this Christmas-themed short story. Everything has come together nicely, and I'm now trying to figure out how and where I want to publish it. I just finished making the cover for it last night, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. One glance at it, and everyone will know it's a retro creature feature.

I've carved out some time from my editing to wrap up a few gifts for Christmas. Once they are sent out and opened by the few recipients, I'll post some pictures up. I've created a set of unique gifts, and only a handful of them exist. As far as the people receiving them, they have no idea what they're getting. So, it'll be interesting to see what they think. 

I've compared my first draft to my second (for chapters where I completed my second draft checklist) and concluded that planning my second draft was a great idea. Everything reads better and is much more engaging. I've given the first chapter or two to test readers, and they've had extremely positive things to say.

I've been working through revisions to create the official second draft of the novel. As I read through and compare the first and second drafts, it's apparent that the second one has so much more punch. This is precisely what I wanted. You can see so much in the first draft, but it's the revisions where the work truly begins to shine.

I don't know—there's just something spammy feeling about both of those words to me. After extensive research, I've discovered sites out there allow people to join a list and receive regular emails, like zen habits, but don't use the typical terminology. Newsletter certainly sounds less spammy, though. So, I've decided to join the movement and do that. I've officially launched my not-yet-named email thing and put up the short story audiobook of Inching Along After the Apocalypse.

Depending on who you talk to or where you research, the terms mean something very different. For example, a newsletter seems to be a regular, expected email. A mailing list, though, maybe more sporadic. What do I want? I think a newsletter, probably monthly. But, I want to provide real value to readers, so I'm going to put some thought into how I might accomplish that.

After careful evaluation, I've paired my twelve-step to-do down to eleven steps. I have a new and shiny editing checklist, and I'm going through each chapter with it. Some chapters need more work than others. It's fascinating to see how far my writing has progressed since I started. The first chapter reads as if someone entirely different wrote it. In a sense, that's true. I've put in well over 1,000 hours, so the difference between zero and 1000+ hours on a story is stunning.

I finally finished my edits of the remaining chapters using my shortlist. I've also completely read through Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing and found it helpful. Interestingly, the first two-thirds of Intuitive Editing seems to be a different take on Randy Ingermanson's The Snowflake Method. Still, I went through everything in great detail, just to be sure.

As I've been going through my editing shortlist, I've been able to easily tell which chapters I wrote when tired. My choice of wording on those came across as more passive, less descriptive, and a bit clunky. Paragraphs are broken in odd places as well. They're simple fixes to make, though, so I'm glad I wrote every single day instead of just when I "felt" like it.

As I wrote, I noticed patterns in my own writing and corrected them as I went. Fortunately, it means that a considerable portion of my story doesn't need as much attention on certain things as earlier parts.

A few of the chapters near the end needed some structural attention, so I'm tackling those before moving on with my complete second draft plan.

I took time this past week to create a plan of action for editing. It's about one full page of bullet points. Some of them are much bigger than others, but they have captured my second draft ideas.

I had a writing frenzy last week and pushed my first draft to completion. It's a strange feeling, having it complete after so many months of working on it every single day. It's hard to say precisely how much time I've put into it so far.

I've been writing a novel for about four months now. If you take into account the planning time, then it's been about five months. I'm almost done with the first draft. That's a lot of words I've written this year. It's a lot of time I've spent working on it. Now that I'm nearing the end of the first draft, it feels surreal. Everything has come together in a magical sort of way—it hasn't been easy.

So I've been writing this novel. It's strange to look back and see how far I've come from just a loose idea. The story has layers upon layers, meanings that were either planned or somehow ended up in there. The characters are deep enough to psychologically analyze and speculate about their history and things that are never said or even hinted at in the book. Deep enough to feel so real that my Alpha Readers think of them as actual people and draw parallels to people they've known in their own lives.

I hit 100,000 words yesterday—kind of a Big Deal™. I believe I have around 40,000 left to go to complete my first draft.

So, what does it take to write a novel? You might think I'm talking about an outline, character sheets, backgrounds, a timeline of events, etc. That's not it, though. While those things can certainly be helpful, there's a piece that seems often overlooked when reading about the craft of writing.

I don't remember precisely when I started to write this novel, but I think it's been about 100 days. I just set a reminder to work on it at night, and so I have. I've only missed a handful of days, so few that I can count them on the fingers of one hand. It certainly feels surreal.

I've heard of many ways in which book titles become a thing. Some authors begin with only a title and then develop a story from there. Others hit a magic moment during writing that reveals a title, perhaps a clever turn of phrase, or an unexpected snippet of dialog from a character. There are many methods, all of which are equally valid and interesting.