A little more than a year ago, I wrote a post in which I broke down three books in terms of how long I spent drafting them. One of those books was Bold Moves, one I can now tell you was You, Me, & the Conspiracy, and one is the book I drafted last summer, a project that I’m hoping to revise in August so that my agent can try to sell it at some point in the future.
But since I just finished drafting another book, I wanted to post those numbers for comparison’s sake.
I’m going to call this book Conspiracy 2 because it’s the follow-up to You, Me, & the Conspiracy. I’m really good at titles, can’t you tell?
It’s a connected standalone, and the closest thing I’ve done to a sequel since Genevieve Turner and I were writing the Fly Me to the Moon series–but you aren’t getting more out of me about it yet. ; )
Anyhow, I drafted the book between May 18 and July 14, 2026. In that period, I clocked 53 writing days (so I wrote nearly every day), and the first draft is 90,650 words long. That yields an average word count of 1710. My worst day was June 18 with a measly 119 words; my best was July 13 with 2781. That’s right: I didn’t break 3K once.
The last week and a half was painful because I was so ready to be done, but the last act was complicated and ended up being longer than I’d thought. But for the most part, drafting this book was rather…fun. This was because I’d solved the problem of “what does an academic action adventure romance from me look like?” with You, Me, & the Conspiracy. So I knew how much action I needed, and I knew how much heat I needed. Conspiracy 1 felt as if I was attempting to make a complicated recipe without knowing what the dish was supposed to look or taste like. Conspiracy 2 was making an old favorite, or at least making a dish that’s becoming a favorite.
In some ways, everything is bigger in Conspiracy 2 (bigger battles! badder baddies!), and the couple has a very different dynamic than Jess and Cal. But I didn’t have as many moments of “Oh God, I can’t write a car chase.” Now I know that I can.
I grew this book out of a 2,838-word proposal, which included notes about the characters, an incomplete synopsis, and a discussion of the history that’s relevant to the conspiracy. Yesterday, I revised and expanded that seed into a true synopsis; I’ll send this document into my editor along with the (revised) second draft in the fall. This finished synopsis is 4,024 words long, though I wouldn’t be surprised if that changes as I revise the book.
What I’m curious about now is tracking my post-drafting process more closely. How many days do I spend revising the book before I send it to my editor? How many days go into addressing her developmental notes? How many days do I log on line edits, copyedits, proofreading, etc.? And how much time do I dedicate to promotion?
I suspect that those periods might vary more than drafting. Some books quite simply need more work than others, and I’m too close to this book to know whether it’ll prove to be a needy book or not. But if drafting a book is a 45 to 60 day prospect for me, I’d love know how much time it takes me to revise and market a book.
Emma Barry 