Marty’s First Draft Is Complete!

Marty's first draft is complete!
Progress Update

Well, here we are. It’s 10:30am on Tuesday July 25th, and I just wrote the last words in the first draft of “Marty”. I’m still using quotes there. You’ll see why in a minute.

Yesterday I wrote around 9,000 words, and today I wrote another 4,544 to wrap the whole thing up. The last few chapters just started flowing out of me and wrote themselves. Which seems cliche to write, but it’s true.

It clocks in at 116,435 words and I finished the draft 6 days ahead of my completely made up, self imposed schedule. Around 20% longer than my previous longest work, if memory serves (yes, I’m too lazy to go check.)

What’s next? I’m going to take a week (maybe a little more) off from it before starting editing. I need something as a palette cleanser so I can hit it with fresh eyes.

As for the quotes around the name: I started off just calling it Marty because it was intended to be a completely different thing from what it ended up as. But, when all is said and done, the title of the book is “My Best Friend, Marty.”

It’s the tale of Marty and Matt, who become best friends after a random encounter meeting, and all the things they go through in life together as they grow from young men to adults.

Stay tuned for updates as editing happens. If you’re interested in reading an early copy once I’m done editing (known as Beta reading) and providing honest and thorough feedback, drop me a line at m@mjandreau.com and we can discuss.

More Progress on Marty

It’s been a little more than a month since my last update. On June 9th, Marty was just over 63,000 words. Today, the first draft of Marty sits at 84,018 words. About 21,000 words in the last month. It’s amazing what I can do when I set a goal for myself, isn’t it?

I’ve still got my target set at 90,000 words, though I know, for absolutely sure, I’ll go well over that. The remaining chapters I’ve outlined (which is just creating the chapter with a title, so I remember all the points I wanted to make when I get to them), will surely be more than 6k words. I don’t know where I’ll end up, but I’m sure some of the first draft will end up in the Trash folder of my writing app. It always does.

My goal is to have the first draft by the end of July. If I stick to my daily writing sessions, that should be no problem. Editing usually takes a few months, then all the other nonsense that comes along with a new book, which I’m sure you know so well, if you’ve been following along on my blog here.

And, in case you missed it last time, the tentative title for the book is simply “Marty”. It’s a simple story of two best friends and what they go through in their lives together as they grow up.