So this past Monday morning, I posted kind of a cryptic announcement on my Facebook page:
It was a late night last night, but it was worth it, for now, the time has come to kill some dragons.Let the reader understand.
Posted by John W. Otte on Monday, August 17, 2015
Cryptic announcement was cryptic, apparently. So let me do a little unpacking here.
I am a big fan of just about any game put out by BioWare. I’ve played all the Mass Effect games, plus all the Dragon Age games except for one. So when Dragon Age Inquisition went on sale on Amazon a few weeks ago, I jumped at the chance to buy it. Only once I had it, I didn’t play it.
Why? Because I knew what a time sink a BioWare RPG can be. And I was hip-deep in writing The Iron Staff (yeah, I’m thinking I’m going to use that as the working title for this book from here on out. Now all I need is a name for the trilogy). If I started the game, there was no way I’d finish the manuscript. At least, not in a timely fashion. So I set the game aside and kept writing, promising myself that when the first draft of the manuscript was done.
Well, the time has come. As of Sunday night, The Iron Staff’s first draft is finished. It weighs in at 101,578 words. I’m actually a little surprised. I was worried that it would turn out to be much longer. But it’s done, and that means that it’s time to go after some dragons.
Now that doesn’t mean that The Iron Staff is in good shape. It’s actually a huge mess. I changed my mind on a lot of little details as I was writing. And I’m worried that something might be missing from the book (I have an idea of what it might be, but I don’t know for sure if it’s really needed or not). It’s a mess that will need rewriting and editing.
That’s okay. I’m looking forward to the slog. but I’m not going to start it just yet. I need to give myself some emotional distance from the story and the text so I can be more thorough when I start the rewrite. That means I need some time.
Maybe just long enough to go save the world of Thedas first.