Chapters

I’m finally getting some consistency back in regards to working on my second draft of Far to the North. I’m not breaking any records, but progress is being made. I’ve gone through a couple more chapters in the last few weeks, and it’s starting to turn into momentum. For me, momentum turns into habit, and then I’m off to the races when it comes to meeting my goal.

However, given that, one problem remains. So much time has gone by since I started posting chapters, it doesn’t make much sense (to me) to continue posting those that remain. Of the few that have read my story and have talked to me about it, all of them have said that they’ll simply wait for the book to be finished rather than read chapter by slowly-trickled chapter. They prefer to read the entire story at their own pace.

And of course they would. That’s how anyone wants to read a story.

So, to me, it makes sense to continue working on the second draft but no longer post them when I consider them to be “finished.” In all honesty, the second draft won’t be the final product anyway. I’ll be sending the finished manuscript to a line editor to make sure it’s clean before self-publishing, and I’m certain minor changes will happen between any chapter that is posted here and what will ultimately be the final version that goes on sale.

While I’m somewhat disappointed that my idea off posting chapters to self-motivate my way through draft two did not propel me far enough to finish the book outright, I’m happy for the distance it did give me. And at minimum, anyone who read these chapters now has more than enough material to decide if it’s a novel they’d prefer to buy. I’m a big believer in the ‘try before buy’ model, but it’s also nice to not give it all away for free.

I’ll check in with updates as warranted.