Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/27191
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I've finally committed to writing my first novel. I've been listening to things like _Writing Excuses_ which encourages first time writers to finish their works, but I'm definitely writing an old darling.

I have three POVs. It would be hard to fit this book solidly into a genre as it treads the line of about five of them. I'm 30,000 words in, and while I expect to leave significant portion of that on the cutting room floor, I only have 4 chapters worth of material and the outline currently accounts for about 10 chapters a character. Extrapolating, that's going to put me in a position of about 225,000 words; which I hear is twice the length of an acceptable novel.

More over, I already know the end because in college we wrote and produced the radio drama that this is a prequel to. What I'm writing must end on a significant down note, and so I've been thinking that after I write this, I'm going to have to novelize the radio drama and just call that the middle of book 1.

Someone like Brandon Sanderson can write a 700,000 word chihuahua killer because he's been published. I'm worried that the project I've chosen is too big and violates too many rules if I actually want to publish.

Should I stop now? Or is it valuable to finish, see how much I can cut in editing and try to sell it anyways? I'm worried that if I stop I will never finish anything. But I also have a day job so my writing time is precious and limited. If it takes me a year to finish this, which it probably will; this is the only thing I'll have at the end of the year.

Original score: 4