Hello, friends! I’m sitting here on Saturday afternoon feeling a little strange. On the one hand, I completed a major project, on the other, there’s still so much work to do. Such is the life of a creative. That said, Friday night was the first night that I didn’t sit down to write since September 15th, 2023. It felt weird.
Welcome to the 61st installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and whatever pops into my mind.
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Anyway, let’s do this!
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This week saw around 5,000 words added to Project: Amusement Park and, if you follow me on my socials, you saw that I completed the first draft of the novel.
The final first draft weighs in at 188,300 words and 682 pages in manuscript. To put it in perspective, the novels Dune and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring are close to 188,000 words. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is only a smidge bigger. I got that info from this website.
Tuesday and Wednesday saw the biggest additions with 1,400 words and 1,900 words respectively. On Thursday, I read and polished what I wrote on Wednesday.
Getting to that point in the novel is always a strange experience and words often flow like there’s a leak. When I finished working on Wednesday, my brain felt like pudding but the novel was done. For now.
The next step with it is to read it, make notes, and then work on the second draft. Now, because I did some minor polishing and rewriting as I went, sometimes going back to other sections to help them match up with what was happening, my first draft is almost like a second draft. That said, I’m not quite sure I’m ready for my beta readers to have at it yet. For now, I’m putting it aside to focus on revising the middle grade space adventure books.
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The first volume of the space adventure books is basically done. I think I’ll go through it and do a polish, but I’m pretty happy with it already as I’ve already done several drafts and rewrites.
The second volume of the space adventure books has two drafts. I definitely need to go through it at least one more.
The third volume of the space adventure books is only in first draft. This one probably needs the most rewriting/revising, though it’s pretty solid for a first draft.
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In addition to the revisions, I really want to do some submissions. I may go through my short story folder to see what needs revisions and submissions. I have a bunch of stories that are just gathering dust. Even if they end up here, at least they’ll have readers.
I also have an idea for a serialized novel over on Patreon. It’s nothing more than a concept right now but I’m leaning toward doing it more and more. Mainly because I think it’ll be fun.
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There’ve been other things I’ve been playing with, too, but I’m not going to mention them right now because they’re just play.
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Okay, that’s this week’s newsletter. Thank you for reading!
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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