I wrote a book in less than 40 days

Let me tell you about this project

My current blurb for this book is…

“Marcel discovers that he is a witch, but he after six months he must now summon his familiar or have his magic sealed for the rest of his life. When the summoning spell goes wrong, he decides to pour his heart’s desires into the spell, strenghtening it beyond practical measures. He accidentally summons three very different familiars, a witch, an imp, and an elf from their different dimensions. Now he must bond with them or fail to fully awaken his magic and ruin his core. The problem? He has no idea how to bond with one familiar, much less three.”

My blurb will probably change, but I want this to be a book about taking chances, opening up to new people, and allowing yourself to heal. So obviously, I did cry a few times while writing it.

It has four povs, which is a lot, but I want to try pushing myself to try new things and grow as a writer. Though, I definitely need to make it longer. Because I have more things to say, but in reality, my characters have more to say and I am playing catch with their words.

Word Count?

So far, I have just finished the first draft at 68,035 words. If I am being honest, I wanted it to be 80,000 so I have to go back and sort out some of the plotholes, along with adding dialogue and descriptions that add texture to the story.

I plan for this to be a four book series, with a novella for one of the characters.

But this has shown me that I can be a fast writer, I can create stories that I am interested in, rather than creating something because it was requested.

What was my writing process like?

As for any tech or program that I used, I started using Waystone, it’s a local-first writing program with a lifetime subscription for $34.99 USD. I used it to write because it has no AI and I didn’t want for my work to be a part of some bigger machine.

I had morning and evening writing sessions, where I was sometimes able to write up to 4,000 words in a day. But I also had days where I was too sick to even write anything.

My process was a cycle of what happens next. I wrote in the morning, while thinking of how to keep the story moving even when my characters decided to go off script. Between the morning and evening writing sessions, I was able to daydream a bit about the characters and their desires, then I would go back to the evening session with new ideas and a lot of words I wanted to see on paper.

What went wrong?

During the process, I fell down the stairs and had to recover. Thankfully nothing was broken, but I was definitely bruised. My keyboard also gave up its life when I was in the middle of a powerful scene. It took a week for me to get another keyboard, and more begging my body to feel better so that I could continue to write.

More than anything, I had to contend with daily flares because I was pushing my body to produce at a level that was not healthy for it.

Ha!

But I ended up writing my last scene and thinking to myself, that’s it for the story. I still had several planned chapters and scenes, but the book was done. So that will go into the next book, which I have already planned out, but writing it has been a struggle.

What happens next to this project?

I hope to be able to continue writing and working on this story. It still has three rounds of revisions left to go before I start asking my beta readers to tell me what they think of the story.

Until then, I have other projects I want to work on. And you can support this journey by either subscribing to my blog or donations, since my disability is still disabling.

I wish you the best, especially now that I am taking life one day at a time.

Lots of Love,

Jona

P.S. If you want to learn more about my writing process, leave a comment, and I will break it down more for you. I might even create a template so you can try it out for yourself.