2022 Life Logs, Day 42: VOW Book One Done
Date: Friday, February 11, 2022
Weather: Sunny Day; High Temp 50, Low Temp 41 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I did it. Tonight, I finished writing the last chapter of the Voyage of Windbird (VOW) book covering the first year of Windbird’s trip around the world. Woohoo! But I am just getting started. I have two more books to write to complete the journey. I am delighted to have one book done, but I am not celebrating because the hard work of editing begins now. When that is done, I will celebrate.
As soon as I finished the last chapter tonight and looked at the word count, I realized that I need to go back and do some serious editing. I wrote 13,982 words to say something that could have been said in 71 words, something like this: “We left the Vava’u Group of Tonga headed to New Zealand. On the first night out, we lost both our autopilot and our windvane steering. Knowing we did not want to hand steer for 700 miles, we sailed to Nuku’alofa in the southern group of Tonga’s islands. We ordered a new autopilot from New Zealand, received and installed it, waited for the weather, and finally completed our sail to New Zealand.” That does tell you what we did, but it certainly doesn’t tell the story. Yet no one is going to read a book with chapters of 14,000 words. Most nonfiction books contain 50,000 to 75,000 words in total. My eighteen chapters total 182,273 words. Just the chapter on the Galapagos is almost 20,000 words. Cut, cut, cut.
My new goal is to complete the editing process by mid-April. I am estimating that at best I can get through two or three chapters a week. I’ll know more about the timing at the end of next week. Maybe it will go faster than I think. I can hope. I really want to get the second book started before summer. It will cover the middle years of the voyage and then the third book in the trilogy will cover our adventures in the Indian Ocean, around South Africa, the trip home and beyond.
I’ve done it again. I just wrote 375 words to say what could have been said in 6 words. “Book one done. Editing begins now.”
