When I published When Shadows Fall, I shared some statistics about the process (which you can read here if you're curious), but I forgot to do so with When Darkness Blinds! But better late than never, so here are some stats on the writing process for book two.
Some of you may recall from book one that my drafting process often leads to a few partial drafts before I finish a full copy, and, as you can see below, I went through a similar process writing book two. (The first attempt was done while in Mexico, which is why it's so short!)
You'll also notice some sizable gaps in the timeline. This is because I started book two before publishing When Shadows Fall, so my work on it was fairly sporadic until the summer of 2023! And even then, there were some breaks to work on book three.
First Attempt: Feb 2020 - 2 chapters - 5067 words
Second Attempt: Summer 2020 - 7 chapters - 37,040 words
Third Attempt: Fall 2020 - 12 chapters? - 85,649 words
FIRST FULL DRAFT: 23 chapters - 149,448 words
(finished March 2022)
SECOND DRAFT: 27 chapters - 158,050 words
(finished summer 2022)
From here, things get a bit messy, as my revisions and edits often morphed into each other, and I've had some trouble deciphering my record keeping. It looks like I did a readthrough/edit of the second draft and sent it to beta readers fall of 2022, and then started into revisions in fall of 2023. January 2024 I finished revisions and sent the book to its second round of beta readers. I went over their notes in May and started another round of revisions in June, which slowly morphed into edits.
I sent the book to more beta readers at the end of 2024 and worked on front and back matter while I waited for responses. This was followed by a final revision, more beta readers to focus on the prose, and two rounds of edits (one before betas and one after), which took me until the end of 2025.
The word count changed during the revision and editing process, slowly going down from 158k to about 125k.
So the question is, how long did that all take? The figures aren't exact as I had to do some guesswork, but the following is a good approximation of the time spent.
Draft 1 (including partials): 109 hours
Draft 2: 118 hours
Revisions and Edits: 1392 hours
TOTAL: Over 1500 hours*
*This number does not include the hundreds of hours spent brainstorming, working on cover art, formatting, and publishing the book.
To be honest, I'm a little embarrassed by how much time I spent on book two. It is a longer book than the first one, but this still feels like an excessive amount of time to spend on a YA novel. With publishing (and especially indie publishing) a major factor in potential success is how many books you have in your catalogue, so the faster you can write/publish books, the better your chances.
It is my hope that as I continue honing my craft, I will learn more efficient processes that allow me to utilize my time better and finish books faster without compromising on the quality. In the meantime, at least I can be proud of myself for sticking with my writing, despite the lengthiness of the process!
