I’m down to the final leg of Arlyn’s story. Less than 10,000 words to go from my length estimate.

I’m realizing my estimate might be a couple thousand off or so, meaning I think I’ll need extra words to finish the story. Still, that’s not a bad amount to be off by with an estimate. I’m still in the range.

I figured it would be about 60,000 words and I feel right now that I’m going to end close to 62,000 words. I’d consider anything around 65,000 words to be a good estimate. If it continues and I’m close to 70,000 or 90,000 words, then I was way off.

Usually after I start a story, I have a good idea of how long it’s going to take so I really don’t think I’ll be that far off. Granted, I was far off when I write To Birth a Destiny but I was way out of practice with guessing and the whole story had gone on for much longer than I’d planned. Not too mentioned that I was a bit flustered in by how the story was continuing to grow. I was seeing at that point that it was going to take me 3 more books to tell Steigan’s story.

Now I can see when I’ve got a big series coming. I think there are going to be more books around the Onim, but I don’t know if or how Arlyn will feature in them. I think what I’m working on now is going to grow, but I don’t want to think about it too much. I want to be surprised when my creative voice jumps on a story and shoots, “Let’s ride!” like it did with Arlyn’s.

Besides, it may want more time to think about things without interference. It’s never about dreaming things up, but rather getting things down on paper. For that, my creative voice likes the solitude without me second-guessing or trying to plot the story.

Well, I have a bit more writing tonight, so I’m back to the cave with Arlyn.

Cheers!