I have been drafting as much of The Step and the Walk as possible before the term at Zane State College starts up again. I’m at 17,642 words, and that’s before I’ll start working on it today.

I always saw the book as sort of being in three different acts:

• Act One – Evandra University arc
• Act Two – Saint Calico Players arc
• Act Three – Return to Mariner arc

Each arc is supposed to be a fairly decent size. Only, last night…I finished the Evandra University arc. It ended faster than I expected it to. But part of it is because I realized Andresh’s journal is only supposed to account for his time at university to the time he’s back in Mariner when he sees Lily for the first time.

Readers, I’ve been using a real-life calendar from the year 1819 (to match with Andresh’s journal) and this story can only take place over the course of six months. That’s…not a lot of time. Especially since Andresh cannot bring himself to journal on a daily basis. I could add more to the timeline in The Step and the Walk, but that would mean I would have to contact my publishers and rewrite my draft of The Name and the Key again just to accommodate a very small detail. I don’t want to do that, and I don’t think I should change The Name and the Key at all until my editor shoots it back to me with notes and a formal editorial letter.

The Saint Calico Players arc can only last from November 29 – December 30. Then Andresh needs to get a ticket on ship to sale to the country of Brinn, which, according to The Name and the Key, takes a month. To correspond with dates in the book, Andresh needs to arrive in February. And he needs to be 19 by then, which means Andresh’s birthday should be in January or February (I just chose January 20 at this very moment based on horoscope personalities, lol).

Anyway, I have Andresh being ship-bound from January 8 – February 10. A month on a ship is a very long time (in comparison, the Mayflower to America took 66 days, but they had a ton of hardships, including winter storms, that delayed their arrival). I need to come up with things for Andresh to do during that final month he’s on the boat.

If I write the same amount for every arc, modeled after the University section, I would only produce 52,920 words. My goal is 66,000 so it’s on par with the length of The Name and the Key. I do not want to write a trilogy that somehow could’ve been served as a doorstopper book. The stories are meant to be separate for a reason.

I’m zipping through all of my main plot points again, and I fear, this time, I’m going to run out of things to write about. I do not want an anemic first draft!

Please wish me luck as I try to plump my story up! Thank you.