Annnnnd... It's Done

Shortly after noon today, I finished Draft # 2 on the Agile book. I continue to feel that the last quarter of it isn't as strong as the first three quarters, but I'll wait to see what others say. Right now Vicki's wading into it (a very brave woman) but I expect it'll take her several sittings to get through all 50,000+ words (yes, thanks to the revising activities of the past week and a half, I managed to burst right through the original word count target!)

I'd say that it definitely improved as a result of that second pass, but I didn't make as many sweeping changes as I'd expected to. I hope that means that it wasn't as awful to begin with as I'd originally thought when I finished Draft # 1, but sadly it could also mean that I wasn't as diligent and critical in my review of it as I should have been. Until last night, I'd only been doing 1 to 3 'chapters' at a time for the second draft, in order to avoid burning out and subsequently lowering the bar. Between last night and this morning, though, I covered the final dozen or so, meaning that perhaps I pushed it too hard at the end. Oh well... fortunately other eyes besides mine will be giving it the once over before I spend any money putting it to paper.

It's hard to get a feel for how long of a read it'll be, since I'm always editing it whenever I read it (and of course everyone reads at their own pace). I'd guess that it'll be somewhere in the 4 - 6 hour range, but I could be way off. I just hope that it doesn't end up being "the longest N hours of my life" for anyone who chooses to dive into it!!