The New Challenge – I’m Such an Idiot!

I have discovered that I’m not happy unless I have a project. It really doesn’t matter what the project is – I’m just a person who has to be working toward some type of goal. Mr. Scott is simply pleased that I’ve quit with the home improvement projects and moved on to genealogy and writing. Neither of those pursuits require his participation or the unexpected expense of a qualified electrician.

After the challenge of the NaNo Write, I took some time off from new writing projects. By the end of last November, I had four novels published and four more written. That was eight novels in about sixteen months. The four books waiting for edit were in various stages of beta read and two were nowhere near ready to go to the editor. I wasn’t burnt out, but I did need to regroup and take stock of where I was going. I had too many story lines and too many characters in my head to do a great job on the finish work.

Both of my editors have real lives and weren’t interested in working over the holidays, so we happily put everything on hold until mid-January. I stepped away from the books and worked on my genealogy for several weeks and then returned to the books with fresh eyes before sending them to the editors. Edits are their own source of stress and a different type of work. Rewriting is simply not as much fun as the original creation. But if you can get along with your editor, the work can be rewarding and the book is better because of that hard work. I like my editors and I appreciate what a challenge my writing can be for them. I am still overly fond of commas and simply uninterested in the proper use of the semicolon.

However, I’m now feeling the need to write something more than blurbs and blog posts. I think I have a story to tell and I have the opening. So, how to challenge myself this time? I have the basics, but not the details. I think I know where this new story is going, but I have no clue how it ends.

I’m giving myself sixty days. That’s starting with a basic idea of a character, a location, and a potential story line. I need to work my way through the character and story development and then do the outline. We know that I can write the basic book in about thirty days, but that was when I already had the story plotted and outlined. I’d had Saving Emily rolling around in my head for almost a year before I sat down and told it. I’ve had the beginning of this story in my head for all of about two weeks. That gives me until 15 May.

Yup! Crazy runs in the family and I’m about to prove I got my fair share…

Sixty days to get from the idea of the opening to completion of the first draft.
Target goal 65-75,000 words.
Yup! Crazy.