I'm working on the 2nd draft of my novel. My goal for this draft is to reduce word count and fix any continuity errors. The first draft was 125k words and I have about 20k left to edit, but I wanted to get it under 100k words before sending it to my beta readers and that doesn't seem to be happening as my edited word count is already at 94k. Looks like I'm going to have to make a more ruthless 3rd draft.

Thanks for creating this group, Frank. After a lengthy academic journey, I graduated from University of South Alabama with an MA in English in December 2024, and I'm currently working at Huntington Learning Center as a tutor and teacher supervisor. I've also been working as an independent travel agent since 2018 but had to step back in 2022 to focus on my thesis. I am currently working to rebuild my clientele after signing with a new host agency. Since finishing my thesis, which was a collection of short stories inspired by father's childhood in West Virginia, I turned my writing efforts towards episodic fiction. I had discovered Amazon's Kindle Vella in 2022 but was too busy finishing my degree to pursue. With the thesis out of the way, I started posting my works in progress on the platform. It was a great way to stay motivated to write and the bonuses paid by Amazon were a nice incentive. When Amazon shut down the program last year, the bonuses and much of the motivation went down with it. I did, however, manage to keep going for the rest of the year and managed to complete a task that had eluded throughout my college career: I actually completed the full first draft of a novel! Ironically, it wasn'tthe novel I've been trying to finish since high school (way back in the 1990s) but a new one that I had only started 18 months prior. I'm currently in the revision process, mostly trying to reduce the word count as the first draft topped 125,000 words, but I've lost my focus as my job and the travel business have monopolized my attention over the past few months. I also spend way too much time watching TV and playing games because sometimes my brain is just too worn out to think.