After nearly two years of intermittent work on it, I have completed the first draft of my novel. It's been a very long road, fraught with frustration over finding time to write, overflowing with joy over putting words on the screen, and replete with discovery as I learned more about the writing process, even at this stage in my experience.

In the end, I have a 405-page double-spaced manuscript with 1-inch margins all around, and typed in 12-point Courier. I chose Courier just because it's the closest I could come to the way old-fashioned typed manuscripts were formatted, and it made the old-fashioned manuscript word count process (250 words per page) easier to track. I realize that style of word count isn't as important in publishing as it once was, but it did make my math easier as I wrote and kept track of the size of my manuscript versus the length of the book when it's eventually typeset.

All-in-all, I feel rewarded by having completed this process. And I will be rewarding myself by taking a few weeks off from the novel before I begin the rewrite process, which, as any would-be novelist learns, is the part of the process where the story really comes together and all the nuts and bolts are tightened. It is my hope that the time away from the manuscript will refresh my perspective on it, and help me polish it into the most perfect novel it can be when the process is complete.

I think it will ultimately be a couple of days before I can actually put the manuscript out of my mind completely for this break. I can't seem to prevent these three words from cycling through my brain right now: "I did it!"

Discovered via Victoria Strauss:

Even Dan Brown can't break the e-book 5% rule

When Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" was released on Sept. 15, Amazon's rankings revealed that Kindle sales outstripped sales of the hardcover. This led some ebook enthusiasts to herald the dawning of a new era. FastCompany asked, "Could Dan Brown's new book be heralding the e-book age?" CNet wrote: "The possibility that the Kindle version of 'The Lost Symbol' -- which follows Brown's wildly popular 'Da Vinci Code' and 'Angels & Demons' -- is outselling hard copies on Amazon could be a monumental moment in the e-book industry."

Last night, I passed the 92,000-word mark on the first draft of my novel. I have written eleven chapters so far. I have one final chapter to complete. Interestingly, the last two chapters have come along much more rapidly than the middle of the story. I'm not exactly sure why that is, except that I have developed a quirky new habit about my work while I'm plotting chapters and scenes.

Every night, when I've ended my final new sentence for the evening, I start a new paragraph and type the words "And then all hell broke loose."

When I begin writing again the next night, the first thing I see is that sentence: "And then all hell broke loose." It spurs me on to ratchet the story up a notch higher than I had the night before. As a result, my writing is more productive and I feel better about the work I've already completed.

I don't know where I developed that habit, or even if it's original to me. I suspect that it is not my invention. I will say, however, that it works when I'm worried about where the story is going and whether I'm keeping things moving at a good clip in terms of advancing the story.

Try it sometime in your own work.

It's been a long road, and I still have a couple of miles to go. Last night, though, I achieved a milestone that is only 3,000 words shy of my original goal of an 88,000-word first draft novel. In the end, the first draft seems like it's going to be significantly longer than I had anticipated.

Over time, of course, the story has changed. The characters have taken on lives of their own and have altered the path and meaning of their collective journey in ways I couldn't have possibly conceived when I started this project in earnest a year and a half ago.

Apparently, the story of Little Red Riding Hood dates back quite a bit farther than anyone thought. That's what new research indicates, according to a post over at The Book Blog. Variations on the famous fable are widespread, and researchers now believe the story dates back at least 2,600 years.

I'm close. So close.

After writing just three more chapters, I will become one of the storied 8 percent of would-be novelists who ever actually completes a first draft. I do not know from where that figure comes, nor am I particularly inclined to research it just now. But it does feel good to think that I am almost to a place where I can count myself among those who have had the spark of inspiration for writing a novel, and then gone on to actually do the work of writing it.

The past week has been a particularly devastating one in terms of making time to sit down and type on a keyboard outside of work. Bad news, sad news, illness, accidents, and simply life in general can all step in front of a writer's "me" time, which is the time he uses to physically put those thoughts and ideas that have been rolling around like boulders in his head all day into narrative form in a word processor. The past week, for me, has been a doozy.

CSI creator Anthony Zuiker thinks mixing a novel with a website and a film might at least give the book publishing industry a creative new means of boosting revenue. My question: will a novel produced using this format ever have the longevity of say, Dracula, which is still being read and enjoyed more than 100 years after its first printing? With an integrated format that changes as rapidly as the web, it's worth asking.

Read more of Zuicker's interesting comments after the jump.

Don't bother lamenting that kids aren't interested in the classics anymore. Apparently all it takes is the endorsement of a wildly popular author of sparkly vampire stories. Discovered via The Book Blog.

..."hand."

In my not-so-spare time, I have been working on a novel.

I've been writing for 1-to-2 hours per night for months, after a nearly year-long hiatus on the project while the duties of my day job spun my life into a 24/7 tech support spiral. I originally stopped working on it in May of 2008. I picked it up again almost exactly a year later after finding a new job that required me to spend less of my spare time working.

I actually began writing this novel while on vacation at Myrtle Beach in the early summer of 2004. At first it was a mere 1,500 word introduction to an idea without a direction. Really, I didn't even have any characters at that point. I started with a simple description of a scene in my head. From there, the story just kind of grew on its own.

Tonight, that simple scene has produced words that form sentences, sentences that form paragraphs, paragraphs that form pages, and pages that form chapters, and chapters that form...well, 75,000 words. It's a magic number in the world of novel writing. Everywhere you look online, you'll see that 75,000 words is often the delimiter that defines the difference between a novella and a novel. Once you hit the 75,000 mark, you are writing a full-on novel.

To put it in perspective, what I have written so far is almost 2,000 fewer words than Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

That said, I am not done. I have begun the concluding arc in this tale, but there is much more left to do. One thing I can say at this point, though, is that I now have an expectation of approximately how long the first draft manuscript will be when completed.

And, yes, the 75,000th word in my novel really is the word "hand."

Two Peas Publishing announces the paperback release of Don Meyer's novel Jennifer's Plan (ISBN: 978-0984077311). The book is available through amazon.com and other online retail outlets.

The novel is an action-oriented crime drama that follows Jennifer Cerriety as she fulfills her plan to seek retribution against a gang of roughnecks who commit unspeakable acts of violence against her and a man named Harold Seaweather.

Midwest Book Review gave the hardcover edition of Jennifer's Plan five stars, calling it "a masterpiece of narrative storytelling and a highly recommended addition to community library collections and supplemental reading lists."

Don Meyer is the author of three books, including Jennifer's Plan, Winter Ghost, and the Vietnam War memoir The Protected Will Never Know.

Jennifer's Plan is available for purchase by booksellers from Two Peas Publishing. It is available for retail purchase through Amazon.com, Don Meyer's website, and other retail outlets.