The Female Gaze – First Draft Complete

I finished the first draft of The Female Gaze yesterday.

It came in at 20,049 words. I think the final version will be 2,000+ words more or less either way. When I finished typing, I’d just discovered a new line of thought that I wanted to pursue, but there’s also a lot of repetitive text that will have to be taken out. So it’ll end up being somewhere in the 18,000-22,000 word range, give or take some words.

The next step will be to print it out and really see what I have. All in all, I’m sure I can edit it into shape. Despite the fact that it is my first non-fiction book, it’s pretty short. In terms of length it’s the equivalent of maybe ten really long blog posts put together. And I’ve been writing posts for my anime blog Neo-Shonen Fujoshi since 2009, so it’s not like non-fiction writing is an unknown for me. ;-)

I’ll have to remember to make a contribution to Nanowrimo for helping me to finish the draft in a 30-day period. Nanowrimo has extended its Camp Nanowrimo idea, where you can write a first draft of a project during the thirty days of April or June, to any month of the year. In other words, in any month that you choose you can log your project, specify the total number of words you’re trying to write, and update your word count each day at the Nanowrimo site.

I did that this month for The Female Gaze and completed my first draft. It’s a tool I can recommend. I’ve completed a number of novels using Nanowrimo, including ones in The Queendoms Series.

Here are my writing plans for the rest of the year. I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to start editing The Female Gaze. October will be a busy month with GayRomLit and a few other things on my plate. I’ll also be prepping in October for Nanowrimo in November.

This November, I’ll be using Nanowrimo to write the first draft of Tales of the Queendoms, my long-postponed collection of short stories set in the Queendoms universe. I’m finally in the mood to write it and am eager to get to it.

I think I’ll probably do some editing on The Female Gaze in October, put it aside in November as Nanowrimo tends to blow everything else out of the way, and return to it in December. So there’s an outside chance that I’ll release The Female Gaze in December. If not in December, then for sure in January.

Hope you are enjoying the beginning of autumn as much as I am! :-) I’ll update again before GayRomLit.