At the end of last year, I publically declared that I was going to finish the first draft of All of our Tomorrows by 22nd March 2019.
Well, that date has come and gone and, as you may have guessed already my draft is still not complete.
I normally pride myself on following things through, so the question is: what happened?
Well, I’ll tell you. Two things happened.
The first was nothing to with the book, but everything to do with my day job. Back in December, I had a plan that I would take work easy at the start of 2019 and use the subsequent free time to crack on with my book. The reality was that the exact opposite happened. I had a couple of big projects to deliver alongside an uptick in clinical work (NHS winter pressures are a real thing), which meant that I didn’t have as much time as I thought to work on my book.
The second reason is novel-related. Back when I made that declaration, I estimated that I’d have about another 20,000 words to write to finish it. This turned out to be wrong. I’ve actually written more than 20,000 words since my declaration, but my story is still not quite done.
I had a good think about the ending on Friday and I reckon the book needs a little more space. I’m going to add another three chapters and an epilogue to my story and with this, I think it will end well.
So how long will this take me? Well, after being burned once I'm going to take a leaf of of George RR Martin’s or Scrivener’s book and just say “It’ll be done when it’s done.” As a rough estimate I reckon it'll be a matter of weeks not months, but we shall see...