It’s funny how editing can be both the quickest and slowest part of writing.  When I actually sit down to work on it it goes much faster than writing. Earlier today I got to 78% edited on the second draft. I wanted to talk about what the percentages mean on my site.

I got the idea from a fantasy author I like a lot, Brandon Sanderson.  I follow his blog often and I really enjoy getting to see how much more he’s done on his latest books. It’s fun getting some idea on when I will get to read another one. I wanted to give my readers the same thing.

The percentages work in two ways: one for writing, and one for editing. When I’m writing I take an estimated word count to mark as the end of the book. For my young adult novel I used 65,000 words (it actually ended up about 60,000). For book one of the Lands of Draknor series, I’m using 200,000 words.  When I’m editing I take the total number of pages (in Microsoft Word) compared to what page I’m currently on.

For those interested: 78% is at the end of Chapter 19 on page 150/193, and the book is 62,000 words.