End of January post: 50k words achieved!

Hello everyone,

As the month of January is almost at its end, so is my novel. It's a nice birthday gift to myself to have made it so far! 

I've been able to get through the toughest scenes and didn't break down (not entirely anyway :D ).  I am going to write another 5k words at most to end it. It's going to take me probably another week or two, then the grueling process of editing will start. I don't know what the final word count of the novel will be, but it should hover around 50k after all is said and done. There will be cuts for sure, since I need to tighten some scenes that now seem to go on for too long. Most of the dialogue flows as it should and it feels natural when I read it out loud, but there are parts where I go "Who the hell wrote this?!" :D 

The biggest improvement that I am focusing on is adding more description. It's something that I lack in Light My Way as well. I got some feedback from a few sources and it's been enough to see that it's my current weak point. My edits will mostly focus on that, as the story seems to be well-liked by the ones who read it. It's emotional and "really describes the actual feelings very well" as noted by some. The "problem" is that I focus on the interior a lot and the exterior doesn't get enough attention. I see it all in my mind's eye. How the characters move, the sounds on the street, the small facial ticks, and such. But I need to also write them, because the reader can't possibly know what goes on in my muddy mind. So I'll try to explore that side of my writing that I haven't touched on enough.

Let's see what I will come up with! It took way longer than expected to finish this and it's a bit funny...Technically, Graven will be my first finished novel since Light My Way is still in production. I need to add a few more chapters there too and while I have a lot of ideas, I am just too much in the Graven mood to be able to focus on anything else :) That's a good thing. I worked hard on this. I hope you'll see the results of my work soon! 

See you in 'Zuul! 
-Hadrian Maximus