A Milestone in the Writing Process, a Post by R. Clint Peters

At 10:45 this morning, I reached the plateau of 50,000 words in The Dakota Connection, second in the Ryce Dalton series.

Why is this important?  Because I am almost at the point where I feel my project can be concluded.  I am close to declaring The Dakota Connection can actually be called a novel.

50,000 words are a lot, but when I looked online, I discovered the average length of a novel is 60,000-100,000 words.  That works for me, because the present goal is to add 10,000 words.  That means I am on the downhill run for this novel.

I went back through my files, and checked the length of other novels I have declared were complete.

The Pendergast Prerogative, the first novel I wrote, was printed at 52,569 words.  The rewrite, however, is now at 67,142 words.  And, I might add, the additional words make the novel better.

The Alberta Connection, a Ryce Dalton novel, hit the publisher at 83,734 words, and Pegasus Rising, which is on the editor’s desk, tops the scale at 120,732 words.

The other books in the Pendergast series are rather light reading.  One has 50,406 words, the second has 47,555 words, the third has 54,000 words, and the fourth has 47,800.  However, it must be pointed out that these four books were written when I had no idea what I was doing.

A quick bit of math shows I have written 471,425 words.  And that is only the novels I have published in one form or another.

If I can continue to write 1000 words a day, The Dakota Connect promises to be complete, at least in first draft, in ten days.  That will be another milestone.

Let me know how many words your novels contain or even how many words you think deserve to be in a novel.  rclintpeters@outlook.com

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