Today, I will be sharing another update regarding the progress of my fantasy novel, as well as an experience that has recently encouraged my writing journey! We will start with the former.
My morale has been struggling for several months now. Back in July 2025 when I first began my manuscript, I started out strong and stayed extremely enthusiastic about it for nearly the entire first year. Throughout that time, I rewrote the beginning three times, nearly completed the manuscript (only five chapters from the end), promptly decided to rewrite the entire book, nearly completed that new version (only two chapters from the end, this time), then proceeded to begin another complete rewrite around April 2026. These rewrites were necessary due to massive revisions and structural adjustments (the first time, I rewrote it because I found the manuscript too boring with irrelevant subplots that I wanted to change, and the second time I decided to change my manuscript from one simple storyline into four complex alternating narratives). My writing also improved drastically throughout this time as I have developed my individual style, improved my prose and narrative voice, worked out my character development, made decisions/changes regarding perspective, and learned more about distinguishing good from bad writing; therefore, I wanted my manuscript to reflect my growth and remain consistent in style.
Having said all of this, I knew this whole rewriting process was necessary for the good of my manuscript, but I still began to feel overwhelmed and daunted by the sheer amount of work that remained. Being back at chapter one after nearly a full year of work was more than discouraging, especially when I was previously only two chapters away from finishing the entire book. To have so little complete after working on it for so long—especially when there's people around you who started after you yet are already finished with their novels—made me feel as if I was behind and would never catch up. Because of all this, my progress began to stall and I felt as if I would never have the capability or time to finish my book.
Several weeks ago, though, I heard about a nearby writer's conference and decided to swing by to check it out... and I am so incredibly grateful that I did! I attended two workshops which discussed topics such as revising/editing your manuscript and how to turn your book into an audiobook; both of them were insightful and extremely fun! After the lectures, though, we had the opportunity to chat with local authors—and it was one of the most encouraging experiences of my life! Each and every one of the half-dozen local authors I spoke with were so forthcoming and sincere as they told me about their writing & publishing journey; they were kind enough to share so much valuable advice, information, mentorship, and resources for my own writing. Several of them encouraged me to persevere with my book even though it's taking forever to complete. Attending this conference truly re-ignited my passion for writing in a way I never thought possible. Seeing the hard work of people in my very own community paying off made me feel as if I could do the same thing. It helped me realize that connecting with a community of like-minded individuals does so much for improving morale. I truly wish I could have supported each and every one of these authors by buying a book to show them how grateful I am for their time.
This event was weeks ago, now, and I have written nearly every single day since. More than that, I am actually enjoying it again! I am excited about my book, which is a feeling I haven't experienced this intensely for months. It is a priority to me again; something I look forward to doing each evening when the kids go down for bed, or that I want to wake up early for. I even shared the plotline of my book with my family for the first time—after a year and a half of writing it!—which is something I have avoided because I struggle with synopses and I am admittedly very self-conscious of my projects as I am uncomfortable with being the topic of discussion. Now that my husband has learned about the story, though, he is very enthusiastic about it which has also proven to improve my confidence and motivated me to write faster. Since the conference, most days I've been adding 1,500+ words to my manuscript (sometimes up to 2,000), which is truly an accomplishment for me as a busy mom and a notoriously slow writer. The last time I was able to accomplish this much was when I first began writing this book, back in mid-2025. I am determined to keep my morale high from now on to avoid another slump, and I am teaching myself new ways to keep motivation steady when writing becomes difficult.
Now, regarding the actual progress of my fantasy novel, I am excited to report that I have just reached 121k+ words as of yesterday!
It is difficult to anticipate how much I have left to write as my manuscript is undergoing a full rewrite. My previous version was approximately 90k words and I was only two chapters from the end. When I read through my manuscript, though, I was unhappy with being confined to the perspective of only one main character. I wanted my story to contain revolving storylines from multiple perspectives which would eventually converge at the end, but I felt incapable of pulling off such a complex narrative. I wasn't sure where to start with it and I was also putting an imaginary time-limit on my book, telling myself I needed to "get my name out there" as soon as possible and publish before I got "too old". I remedied this nonsense by taking a hard look at the authors I respect the most; many of them (if not most) began their publishing careers in their 40s, 50s, occasionally even 60s. Most of them worked on one single book for 2-3 years before publishing, sometimes even longer. And the amount of effort they put into their craft truly shines through in their books—especially in comparison to the many mediocre modern novels which are written & produced within the course of only a year. I truly believe it takes a great amount of time to produce an outstanding work of art, so I removed the modern expectations from my mind that it needed to be done quickly, and instead allowed myself to rest in the fact that there is no right time frame. Utilizing as much time as I need to make this book outstanding is not "taking too long" or causing me to become "too old" to publish; it’s doing what needs to be done in order to bring the book to a place of maximum epic-ness.
Once I stopped holding myself to these ridiculous imaginary standards, I decided to stop being lazy about it and just weave in the amount of perspectives that I wanted from the start! I thought long and hard about my book, assessing my manuscript to see what could be improved upon, and I came up with three additional storylines to weave into my existing narrative. All of these new storylines are relevant and integral to the main character's story but can also stand alone as interesting and complex in and of themselves. Coming up with all of this prompted my decision to rewrite the book again, so that is what I am doing now: weaving these storylines into my pre-existing one. And for this reason, it is quite difficult to discern how much I have left to write; I am writing some chapters completely from scratch (my new storylines) whilst others are being heavily, heavily revised—often to the point of fully rewriting (my original storyline).
About a week ago, I finally sat down and organized my jumble of notes for this project. I have been dreading this because I have notes strewn all over the place, but I knew this was important because I really wanted to establish a realistic estimate of how much I have left to write. It took forever, but I managed to come up with an outline for each chapter in my book, then I estimated my end word count according to that outline. I calculated 8k words for each new chapter I needed to write, and an additional 2k for the ones I already have written. In the end, my estimated word count is around 150,000 words (more or less). This is not a "word count goal", per se (as long as I stay under 170k words, I will be satisfied). The only reason I have done this is because it's encouraging for me to see how close I am to completion.
Another thing that has improved my productivity (and motivation) is switching from Google Docs to Reedsy. This is a program which tracks your daily word count and even allows you to enter writing goals. I first heard about this program at the conference and I am so happy that I switched over. It is invaluable to see my daily progress, and it is also helpful to observe which times of the month I am more productive than others so I can plan my more-intensive writing sessions around the times I will be most sharp-minded. For fun, I entered my "word count goal" (not a true goal of course, just an estimate) as 150k, and it is showing that I am 80% finished with my manuscript. I believe that is a fair assessment of my progress because I am truly getting close. Notwithstanding my previous assertion of avoiding time constraints, I do anticipate being finished with my first fully-completed "1st draft" by spring of next year. Depending on how it goes, I would love to publish by mid-to-late 2027. We will have to see.
One last, additional topic I wanted to discuss was another program I heard about at the writer's conference: Speechify. Speechify is a program that reads aloud your work in a relatively natural cadence, which can assist your writing by allowing you to listen for mistakes in your manuscript. After I learned about it at the event, I gave it a try and found it incredibly useful, as the "human-like" voice really helps to spotlight the mistakes better than just reading in your mind (also better than the former robotic voices such as Google text-to-speech). However, I also came to realize that Speechify uses AI technology to create the voices and I am truly conflicted as to whether or not I want to utilize this resource in my own work. I adamantly abhor the use of AI in all creative aspects, whether it be writing, artwork, singing, recipes, YouTube videos, you name it. While I do realize AI can have potentially useful purposes, it is impossible to ignore the devastating ramifications that come alongside it. It's becoming far too easy to delegate every single task, thought, question, and project to AI instead of expending real effort into creating something unique. AI is trained using real human's work and then passes off it's mediocre, plagiarized creations as original. It’s damaging people's ability to create for themselves and even think for themselves. It's incredibly disturbing to see how many people research on ChatGPT and blindly believe whatever it spews out without even bothering to check the references to see if the information they are being given is correct. Half of the time, it is not; I know this from testing it out myself and actually reading the refrence articles thoroughly to check the validity of the generated answer (which is precisely why I switched to Ecosia with the AI mode turned off). It's heartbreaking to see how many formerly-creative people have relinquished their God-given creativity and capabilities to AI in order to save fifteen minutes on a project. It's insane to me how people utilize AI so thoughtlessly without consideration of the effects it's having on our world. All of this is not even scraping the bottom of the barrel. I could go on, but that's not the purpose of this post.
Considering my dozens of grievances with AI, though, it doesn't actually appear that most of them apply to using Speechify in particular. Speechify itself doesn't seem to be stealing people's voices, as real actors work with the program and consent to having their voice-recordings modified by AI. It's not harming my creativity by telling me how to write, what to write, or writing it for me; my work (including editing and artwork) is 100% my own, the program is simply reading aloud my already-finished project in order for me to hear the mistakes I've made (then I manually correct them myself as I see fit). The one issue that remains, then, is the environmental impact; we should all be well-aware by now that AI data centers are causing absolutely devastating, irreversible impacts on the environment. That should be an consideration each and every time we want to use AI; do the benefits outweigh the risks? Does a cute Facebook picture justify the potential risk? Certainly not. Does saving five minutes writing an email or social media post justify it? No. Does medical advancement justify it? If used in responsible moderation, absolutely. Does listening to my book several times before publishing justify it? I am not entirely sure on that one. This is a decision I'm going to consider carefully as I work on my manuscript, and hopefully I can eventually reach a responsible decision that is not only beneficial for me but for the wellbeing of our world in general. If anybody is bothering to even read these ramblings, I would love to hear your perspective and insight! We are all learning and should continue to learn with an open mind, disregarding all preconceived notions and taking into consideration the impact our choices have on others.
All this said, I am making great progress on my book and I am excited to see what comes next. I am so excited to share my work with the world! In my previous post, I shared the fact that I am also illustrating one of my children’s books at the moment; I am halfway done with that project, and I am hoping to release that book by the end of this year. In the meantime, I hope you all have a happy day! Keep writing!
