A Writer's Blog: Exploring the Journey of Writing 'Death From Within'

One of the challenges of writing Death From Within is having Sylvie constantly insist on helping me.

Jan. 1, 2025

Welcome to my blog detailing the process, challenges, setbacks, and successes of writing my debut novel, Death From Within, the first book in my American Triumvirate trilogy.

I've been working on Death From Within for about 18 months. During that time I completed a 6,000-word outline. Using that outline I wrote the book's first three chapters. Unfortunately, I was not satisfied with how those chapters turned out, so I threw them away and reworked and refined the outline. Then, I reworked and refined the outline again. And again. In late November 2024 I believed the outline was complete, and I was ready to begin writing the book. However, I decided to take a break in December and start the writing process in the new year. It was during that break that I decided to write this blog to track and document my novel-writing journey.

To help keep me motivated and progressing toward my 90,000-word goal, I will set daily word count targets. I will start low with a daily target of 500 words. Each week, I will increase the daily target by 250 words until I reach my final daily word count target of 2,000. These are minimum word count targets, which I will hopefully exceed. In each blog post I will include the previous day's daily word count total. I will also regularly include the project's total word count to track my overall progress toward my goal of 90,000 words.

I will also use this blog to introduce characters, locations, and more from Death From Within. I will also discuss many of the tools I have used in this process. If there is something you would like me to address, please send me an email and let me know.