One of my goals for 2025 is to draft a novel. This is how it’s going so far.
57,809
Words written
696
per session
445
per day
last updated: 6/6/2025
Benchmarked against a 100k word target, here's the outlook based on that pace.
225 days left
at current pace
1/16/2026
estimated completion
last updated: 6/6/2025
Here's a recently written, spoiler-light excerpt.
The Void Lands were a vast stretch of empty, broken earth. Cracks, crevices, and fissures divided the ground every few feet, creating millions and millions of tiny, parched islands crowded against one another. The token browns and greens of chaparral were replaced with a uniform bleached white that met the horizon in every direction. Tangles of petrified, near-black branches twisted into patches of tight knots that dotted the landscape. Others whose roots could no longer hold in the dry ground skipped along, ushered by the wind and faded by the dust they collected. Here and there, the remains of a tree loomed, their shadows difficult to distinguish from the rest of their dark, anguished forms. Ringing the perfect circle of its perimeter was an abrupt line. In the northern areas, above the alien region, blazing orange sand and soil came right up to it. On the east and west borders, wet, vibrant stretches of green ended without transition. Along the south, snow and ice met it with the least amount of contrast. There was no weather in the Void Lands—just wind and dust. It's token features were the remains of what was there before and whatever wandered in, too foolish or desperate to take another path. Even the air felt different—thinner, still, frozen in a stolen moment. The hum of The Firmament in the background was muted—its tapestry of infinite threads diverted around and never through. For Elias, The Void Lands were teeming. Shadows and shades filled the edges of his vision. Where there was a bone pile, he saw it, but steps before it, he saw a wolf. Its fur scant—skin split and peeled away, revealing pools of deep, dark reds. Head hung low, saliva flooded from its mouth, tracing a dark gray path. And its eyes; they oozed that familiar, menacing red. Steps before it, again, was the same wolf following itself. Its coat patchy but fuller, head held higher, eyes less vacant, less luminous. And before it, too, was the wolf again—vibrant, healthy, sniffing the air and ready to hunt, unaware of the fate before it. He saw the decay and the brief history before the decay—ashen land crowded with transparent, desaturated echoes. He saw it for everything that found its way there, beyond the perimeter. "The Firmament is gone," Elias stated in an uncomfortable tone not long after they'd crossed the western border. He'd marveled at how he could have one foot in green grass and the other on bone white as they entered. It was only when his awe passed that he noticed the difference. "There is nothing here." Rosalin's words were clipped, her jaw tight. There was no relief in her demeanor despite reaching their destination. "Dangerous." Elias wondered what a Seeker was without The Firmament. Without all that access to its raw power, were they just human here? The thought made him pull at the shoulder straps of the pack he was carrying which had lightened substantially by the fourth day of their trek. They passed a thick, cracked tree trunk laying across a patch of level ground and Elias slowed to look at the frozen mirage of some large carrion eating bird. It perched, statuesque, staring out at something that no longer existed. Its bones were a scattered line drawn away from the tree at an angle. "What about these... illusions? They're everywhere. How do they work without The Firmament?" Rosalin turned to face Elias as he knelt next to the log. He was passing his hand through the air, his intense focus folding lines into his forehead. She walked up behind him, stared at the empty space he was fixated on, and then glanced at Cambridge who shook his head in response to her silent question. "What are you doing?" "It's a vulture. Or maybe a buzzard." Rosalin traced the sharp lines of the section of tree and then spotted the trail of avian bones. "Tell me what you see." "It's right here." He looked up at her but was met with confusion. "The bird?" He cocked his head to the side. "You don't see it." He stood up, his mouth opening as he looked around. "You don't see any of it, do you?"