127:
4/24/2023
Where to begin?
Nothing went according to plan. First of all, I had to take a week off to focus on something else, which was the first week I haven’t got a chapter done since I got back to working on this Batu stuff in February.
I more than made up for that though this last week as I began to tackle the final chapter for Part Three, only to have it blow up on me into a monster that became two chapters, the last half becoming my actual final chapter, and the largest chapter I’ve ever written for any of the Batu books. Wrote two chapters in one week, the first – Chapter 59: Naked & Afraid – coming in at 3,427 words (10 pages); and the second and last – Chapter 60: The Temple of Mugasha – coming in at 5,614 words (19 pages).
That’s 1,292 words every day. Actually, more than that if you count only the days of the new work and not the 3 days spent merely copying it all by hand to paper. So really, it was 2,260 words a day for 4 days. That’s a lot of work when you consider how many rewrites every page went through.
That being said, there’s still a lot of work to be done with Chapter 60: The Temple of Mugasha when I come back to it in two years when I’m on a real computer. While transcribing my final draft to paper I became aware of a lot of plot holes and things needing to be fixed I hadn’t noticed before. But it’s good enough for now and I’ll move on.
In fact, I’m toying with splitting The Temple of Mugasha into two chapters and having the new final chapter be of Diallo rescuing Dougga, but from Diallo’s POV instead of Dougga’s.
But that would be a lot of work I’m simply not up for right now. Part of the reason for doing this is that the chapter is just too long. Only 3 other chapters I’ve written come close to being so long. That’s only 3 out of 133 chapters total. Chapter 14: The Search for Bakar – coming in at 4,556 words, Chapter 47: Womb of Darkness – at 4,357 words, and Chapter 54 in Book Two, The Wedding Challenge – with 4,973 words.
Another reason for splitting The Temple of Mugasha and creating a new last chapter for the The Ghost Frog story arc is that what I got right now is leaving me feeling a little shortchanged emotionally, and that it should wrap up with Diallo’s POV, not Dougga’s. And that ending things simply with the culmination of plotting elements without tying up Diallo’s emotional ones – primarily the sacrifice he makes and his choice of friendship over romance, etc.
Anyway, like I said – those are problems for another day. For now, I’m just happy with what I got and ready to move on.
Incorporating The Temple of Mugasha like I did with the climax of The Ghost Frog story arc was a total surprise and completely a last-minute decision. And it’s the perfect over-the-top image-intensive story element to drive home Part Three as an adventure story. It fleshes out the Batu world and adds a punctuation mark at the perfect point there at the climax. It’s one of the best examples I have to date where the actual act of writing – and not just imagining within my mind – has produced major story elements that never would have existed just by daydreaming if I hadn’t gone to the trouble of putting it down to paper… or to computer. Usually, it’s mainly the subtle nuances that surprise me by breathing in depth I’d never have considered if I hadn’t written it out word by word, but every now and then it’s a HUGE story-changing element that reshapes the entire series that emerges all on its own through the grind of working out the story word by word via writing it down.
Going over my stats sheet where I keep track of all my finished work, I see that Part Three: The Ghose Frog is the largest of al the 8 parts I got so far – coming in at 54,737 words, 20 chapters, and 183 handwritten pages. The second largest is Part One: Children of Batu – at 43,547 words, 21 chapters, and 132 pages.
I’ve also restructured things so that The Shadow Falls is now Part Four in Book Two, instead of Part One in Book Three. And I also renamed Book Two to Tears of Stone, instead of Left Behind. Lost in the Darkness is no longer its own part in Book Two but has been incorporated into Part One: The Kulu.
The reason for all this is that it means both of the first two books are mostly done (with just a few additional chapters yet to write for both to flesh things out) and are equivalent in my mind in both scope and quality. The second one is darker and more tragic, but that also is appropriate for a second act.
Anyway, my totals thus far come to 275,903 words, 892 pages, 133 chapters, and 8 Parts – all of which comprising my first two books.
As of now, Book One is 156,563 words, 512 pages, and 74 chapters. Book two is 119,340 words, 380 pages, and 59 chapters.
I’ll probably take the next week off now that Ghost Frog story is put to bed. Will move on to flesh out The Fever (Part Four) in a week or so. We’ll see.
Present-Day Reflection
9/29/2026
It feels like
2 days left until my launch date.
