Matthew Wuertz

This morning, I finished the rough draft on my latest novel.  It ended up a little under 88K, which is pretty close to my target of 90K.  At this point, I’m taking a break from it for a few weeks, and then I’ll start editing early in 2012.  I don’t know how much more I’ll mention the novel publically unless there’s any significant news.  I expect editing to continue all the way until the novel reaches one of two destinations: publication or permanent classification.  At some point in the editing process, I hope to find the novel polished enough to approach agents.  I’m looking forward to the next stages. 

On 11/11/11, my wife gave birth to our third child, Lockelan Arthur.  Mom and baby are doing well.  He looks just like his older brother, William.  We chose another Scottish name to match William, but we altered the spelling in recognition of our favorite LOST character.  The middle name is not due to the man in Camelot, but instead references Arthur Dent from one of my wife’s favorite books (or series of books, I should say), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

This morning, I reached 80K on the novel rough draft.  The end is certainly near, and yet I can say that I’ll be participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time in a long time.  I highly doubt I’ll finish the rough draft within November, given that our next child is due that month and that I’ll be taking some days off around Thanksgiving.  Still, I think that I’ll stay on track for completing the rough draft before 2012.  At that point, I’m going to work on a science fiction short story that’s been in my head for a while now.  I’m doing that to force myself to take a break from the novel for a few weeks so that I can come back to it with keener senses.

Today, I hit 70K words on the rough draft of my novel.  These last ten thousand words were the most difficult to write.  I don’t know if it’s just due to some sporadic changes in my schedule in the past couple of weeks (which included a vacation), fatigue, or some other unknown factor.  Whatever the reason, it took me about six weeks to write these latest ten thousand words.  But I can take heart in the fact that progress continues, and I’m nearing the end of the rough draft.

My science fiction story, "Galactic Wonders," is now available at Ray Gun Revival.  Here's a link directly to the story: http://www.raygunrevival.com/galactic-wonders-matthew-wuertz/

Over the weekend, I had a story accepted at Ray Gun Revival.  This will be my second published work of science fiction.  I'm excited to have a piece in their magazine, another of the remnants of Double-Edged Publishing. 

I’ve just toppled past 60K on my novel this morning.  It’s been another productive few weeks.  I also spent some time rewriting one of my short stories; I had some ideas rattling around in my head that I wanted to try, so I added them in.  I just need to polish out these changes before I’m comfortable using the new version in submissions, but it should be ready next week.

My writing pace increased over the past few weeks, allowing me to hit 50K words on my novel this morning.  I feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I know where things are going, and I think 40K more (plus a few extra thousand for good measure) will probably do it.  When the rough draft is complete, it’ll be time to start the editing process.  I’ll be ready by then to really tear this thing apart and rebuild it into something better.

Today I woke up early to ensure that I would move past the 40K mark on my novel.  It feels like a great accomplishment.  Keep in mind that it’s been a few years since I’ve undertaken writing a novel, so I don’t have a lot of experience to fall back on.  I’m also pleased to have picked a title.  It could always change over time, but it feels like the right title.  I like to keep titles of my works to myself, so no reveals on that.  One of my main characters had a name that phonetically matched one of the words in the title, so I changed his name, which was probably for the best anyway (it's more creative now).

I’ve passed the 30K mark with my novel’s rough draft.  Everything seems to be going well so far, and I like how it's coming together.  I’m now targeting around 90K for the complete rough draft, and I’m still on track to finish before the end of the year.