The Nuts and Bolts of Writing a Novel

I'm going to give a brief walkthrough of the journey thus far pertaining to writing my book.

The first thing I did was simply to plant myself in front of the word processor (Open Office 3.3) and compose a first draft. In double-spaced, twelve point Times New Roman, this document ended up at 691 pages and took a little over two months to finish.

My next step is revising the text, which I am still literally in the middle of. I've run into some interesting quirks during the revision process.

Of paramount importance was bringing the text into conformity with standard manuscript format (which I would've used from the start had I known what it was then). My 691 page Times New Roman, twelve point document swelled to over 800 pages upon conversion to the mandatory Courier 10 Pitch font.  I'd also been using asterisks to denote time breaks in the first draft, and I had to replace all of these with single pound signs.

The aesthetic work done, I began editing the whole book for spelling and grammatical mistakes, as well as for continuity errors and anything else that I felt detracted from the narrative. JJ kindly made himself available to proofread the first draft, and his comments proved to be a big help.

I'm currently on chapter 40, page 511 of the second draft. I'm averaging about 24 pages a day, so the manuscript should be finished in two weeks or so.

Works of the law

Considering the supposed saturation of the legal field, the difficulty I'm having contacting a copyright and IP lawyer seems odd.

I only have a few simple questions that I'd like some professional advice on, but four failed attempts later, the answers remain as elusive as ever. I certainly don't fault the law firm, as I'm sure they're quite busy. Looks like I'll just have to take the difficult but usually productive route of waiting.

Site Additions

I've been busy over the past couple of days adding supplemental material to the site. In-depth exposition about the book and its setting can now be accessed via the links at the top of the page.

Inaugural Post

At least for now, I'm still a holdout against the contemporary web culture of continually micro-posting about the minutiae of my life. To state it another way, I don't believe in posting comments unless there's something worth mentioning.

This post finds me freshly returned from FedEx/Kinko's and the USPS, whose combined powers I enlisted to mail my first short story manuscript to Weird Tales. Having read a few of their recently-published pieces, I doubt I could find a better home for my first finished work. Let's hope their editors share my sentiments.