Good Night to (this draft of) Good Night to the Rock and Roll Era

Yesterday, I finished and printed a draft of my current work-in-progress, my third novel Good Night to the Rock and Roll Era.

It's 545 pages, 124,000 words, longer than my first two novels combined.

With this draft in the can, I'm declaring this book almost finished.

What do I mean by that? Is it done or isn't it? Will you be able to get your hands on it soon?

Not really.

It means I think the major changes to the novel are done--the "who does what, when and what happens" are in place. I still have to fine-tune the manuscript, which means I have to make sure the characters act as much like themselves as possible at every moment, and the language sparkles throughout.

This will require another draft, but this draft will go quicker. Like, a few months.

Both of the last two drafts took eight months. That's while working on it four hours a day, five days a week. Sometimes six.

This stuff takes a long time.

It's been four years since I started this novel. I don't know how many drafts its been through. At least five. I always forget to count.

I will take a month off of it--I just need to forget about it for a while--but I will get back to it some time in October. Then I'll put in a few more months, write a query letter, and send the query letter out into the world, looking for a publisher.

All this by no later than March 1, 2011.

What happens then?

Someone buys the rights to it for a million bucks.

Okay, maybe a half-million.

(Come on. Let me dream.)

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

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