Oont is Finished

I’ve come to a startling conclusion:

The first draft of “Oont,” or “Through A Glass Darkly,” is done. It’s an odd feeling. And part of me is a little disappointed that it’s finished here, short of the psychological 50,000-word goal. I’m at 49,382 words. But I feel the first draft is done.

So what does that mean?

Informal research on my part shows that with 49,382 words, I’ve got a novel of about 165 pages, given an average of 300 words to the page. That’s an informal average I came to after counting the words on pages in several novels and averaging them out.

So it’s short, by most standards.

But that’s only what it means on the surface. Next comes the hard part: Revising. And it’ll take a lot of revising. Not that revision is a bad thing, it’s just that the real difficulties now arrive. And asking Michelle to read it is probably out of the question, given that she’s neck-deep in her classes now. And I’m also walking down the path to teaching a course at BYU-Idaho now, which seems exciting and foolhardy. Will I be able to revise this thing?

Yeah. I wrote the damn thing, didn’t I?

And good news: If I get too tired of the revisions, I can start on the next volume. Yeah, Oont is finished, but the story I’ve started isn’t. Heck, the story in Oont is incomplete and is going to require some give and take, adding in explanations, taking out what’s confusing and such. But I’m well on course to having a revised draft of the book done by the end of the year. I’m excited, and overwhelmed, both at the same time.