Hello readers! It’s been about a month and a half since my last update, but I’m here to inform you that I am indeed still alive and well! As I’m currently at work, this will be a shorter and less rambling update than usual, so let’s get right into it. In my last post, I told you that I had planned a substantial 3-week vacation, which I wanted to use for as much writing as possible. How did that go? Very well, thank you for asking! Between that time off (minus the lovely time spent with family and friends for the holidays) and the time I’ve spent this month, Volume 4’s rough draft has reached a staggering 191,000+ words! I believe I once said Volume 3 would be my longest work ever at around 178K. Boy, was I wrong!
With that said, I somehow still have more to write. We’ve reached the final confrontation. It’s been playing out in my head for months now, so I hope it will write itself relatively smoothly. After that, it’ll be a short chapter of conclusion, and the draft will be complete! In terms of timing, a March release is still looking likely. The large majority of the draft that exists has already been gone over by my editor, and much of it has been updated for line edits by me. Once the draft is officially finished, my final editing pass will be much faster than usual! All that remains after that is waiting for my insert artwork (two pieces, if everything goes according to plan!) and some formatting, and the book will be finished.
For those of you who just can’t wait for the finished product, you’re in luck! As promised, my draft chapters have been going live on RoyalRoad since the end of December. I believe chapter 7 was just posted on Wednesday, with new ones coming twice a week (and maybe thrice a week when the draft is finished!). You can find those chapters at this link. I hope you all enjoy it!
To tie everything back into the title of the post, I wanted to ramble for just a quick moment about scheduling. I feel quite bad that the delay between Volume 3’s release and Volume 4’s release is so long. If I had to guess, it’ll be close to about 10 months between official publications. I imagine the pace could have been greatly increased had I decided to no-life to writing process, but for the sake of my mental health, I’ve been doing my best to keep it at a reasonable and maintainable rate. Not only do I have a job that takes up a majority of my waking hours during the week, but I also have a family, hobbies, and other things to occupy my time. Given my current life schedule, I find myself with about 3 hours a day in which to do anything recreational, and a lot of that time is spent away from the world of Restart Again. I promised myself way back when I started this that I’d always get some words down every day, and I’ve kept that promise for the most part, but if I only end up getting 400 words because I was playing Monster Hunter Rise with some friends (man that game is good), that’s the way it is.
There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do everything I would like to do. I think that’s okay! I’m happy with my current life balance, even if that means a 10-month delay in publishing. Let’s keep in mind that this book will be over 200K words on release; it should keep you plenty busy once it’s finally out! Making sure I’m still happy and healthy has helped me keep my passion for this project alive, and I think it makes the work better as a result.
Alright, work calls, so I’ll close things out. Hopefully, the next update you hear from me on here will be an announcement saying the draft is complete and a release is coming soon! Until that time, though, stay safe out there, and as always, thanks for reading!
~Adam
