Well, I did it! After four years and 425 hours, first draft of my epic fantasy novel, The Cursed Mage is done. It feels fantastic to have completed a full draft of this novel. Here’s an overview of what it took:

• Draft 1.0 – wrote through chapter 12. Jan 2019-Feb 2021. (175 hours)
• Draft 1.2 – Quick line edits from group comments, chp. 1-12. August 2019-Jan 2021. (21.75 hours)
• Draft 1.3 – Revision of Act 1 from Groups Notes. Feb 2021 – April 2021. (18.5 hours)
• Draft 1.4 – First FULL draft, restarted per editorial notes by the lovely Brouge Ramos. May 2021-Nov 2022. (210 hours)

For now, the draft sits at 178,991 words. As you can see, there were a few “false starts” on this project over the past four years. I’m fine with that. However, the slowness of my drafting process is less than ideal.

And I have great hopes that this will not be as difficult as you might suppose. When I started writing this story, I had two little kids at home all day, the eldest being just old enough for preschool–but there was this pesty pandemic that stopped the in-person school from being “a thing”. Writing four years ago was something I had to work hard to make happen. In the last four months, both children have been attending school (it’s magical!), and my writing life has transformed. Because of this, in the last 12 months, I have written about 120k, and in the last nine weeks, I wrote 41,000 words (despite attending an out-of-state wedding a taking time off for Thanksgiving). This gives me hope that the next draft will be substantially quicker.

Here are November’s stats:

In November, I aimed to write for 1-2 hours per day while my kids are in school, and I achieved that. Two hours is not a ton of time; as my children get older and more independent I hope to spend more time. But it’s enough to make steady, consistent progress. And for that I’m pleased.

Next month, I will try and write M, T, TH, and F for 2 hours/day before Christmas break begins. As the month has already begun, I’ve moved my novel in