120,000 words

As of tonight I've hit two targets in the writing of my book, The Comic Strip Companion.

I've just completed another chapter - that's eleven in total I've written now (another six to go before the book's finished). I've also just passed the 120,000 word mark. This is a significant personal milestone.

When I started writing the manuscript last year I estimated that the entire book would be 120,000 words long. The contract I signed with the publisher stipulated a 100,000 word minimum; I thought at the time that 20,000 words over this would be a comfortable margin.

It has long since become apparent to me that this was an hugely overly conservative estimate, and I now expect that the book will end up being somewhere around 185,000 words.

The process of writing the book has been governed by setting targets and planning ahead. I have mapped the book out on an Excel spreadsheet and I update this each day. My aim has been to write about at least one complete comic strip story each day, though of late my writing time has been reduced to three days a week due to other commitments.

I wanted to complete the latest chapter before taking a few days off over Christmas, and I've managed this with a few hours to spare; next week it'll be time to open another Word document and start work on another chapter, every day a step closer to completion!