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.

Plans are useful. Before I began writing, you know, actual words for my novel, I made a plan. I've done a significant amount of reading about writing, particularly novels, and found a model that's been helpful to me on a few different occasions for storytelling. But plans aren't perfect.

What's in a goal? And, what's new since last week? Check-in on the journey to completing my first novel.

Earlier this year, I decided to write every day. Let's take a look at what has happened in those 90 days.

A novel, short stories, random observations, and more. So I decided to create a website to link them all together.